Karama's older buildings — recurring plumbing niggles (smells, slow drains, low pressure): what's normal and what's fixable?

Most of what you're describing is normal for older Karama stock and genuinely fixable, but the pattern tells you when it's more than a quirk. Individually: a drain smell is usually a dried or partial trap (run the tap, it often refills the seal), a single slow drain is a local blockage, and poor pressure at one tap is frequently just a scaled aerator or angle valve from the hard water here. Those are quick, cheap fixes. What's worth a proper look is when the symptoms are shared or spreading: several drains slow at once (a main-line or shared-stack issue, not your flat), a smell that survives refilling the trap (a venting problem), or low pressure everywhere that a booster or a partly-closed main valve would explain. In an older building, chasing each niggle separately gets expensive and never really lands; one visit from a licensed plumber in Karama who looks at the flat as a system usually finds the couple of root causes behind the lot. Descaling and a trap/vent check tends to clear the majority in these buildings.