Letting a Dubai apartment long term: Ejari, cheques, and what the landlord actually nets

Roughly three quarters of Dubai rents, rental income is not taxed locally, and rent is normally paid a year in advance rather than monthly. Those three facts are why the city is a landlord's market and why the gross numbers look so good. What follows is everything between the gross number and your bank account.

Ejari, and why it is not paperwork

• Registering the tenancy with the Land Department is compulsory.
• Without it the tenant cannot connect DEWA, cannot sponsor a family visa, and cannot file at the rental tribunal.
• And the landlord cannot rely on the contract in a dispute. An unregistered tenancy is a weak position for both sides, which is why it is not a corner to cut in exchange for a slightly higher rent.
• It is renewed with each contract, not once.

Cheques: the convention that decides your price

• The year is paid in advance, in one cheque or split into a small number — commonly two or four.
• Fewer cheques command a better rent. This is the most reliable lever a landlord has, and it is a genuine trade: one cheque is more money and less administration, four cheques widens the tenant pool.
• A deposit is customary — around 5% of the annual rent unfurnished and 10% furnished — and it is held against damage, not against unpaid rent.
• The advance payment is the reason Dubai yields feel different in practice. The money arrives as a sum, at the start, and can be put to work for the year rather than dribbling in.

The two notice periods

• Changing any term of the contract, rent included: at least 90 days' notice before the end of the term.
• Evicting on grounds such as sale, your own occupation or major renovation: 12 months' notice, served through a notary or by registered post.
• Missing either deadline renews the contract on its existing terms. An understanding with the tenant does not substitute for service, and nor does an email.
• Keep proof of service. It is the document that decides the case if there ever is one.

What you can put the rent up to

Increases follow a fixed scale tied to the average market rate for that property type in that district: no increase at all where the current rent is within 10% of market, then 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% as the gap widens past 20%, 30% and 40%. The Land Department publishes a calculator that applies it, and its output is what the tribunal will look at. The practical consequence for a landlord is that a flat let well below market does not return to market in one step — it climbs the scale over several years, which is a reason to get the opening rent right rather than to buy occupancy with it.

From gross rent to net

• The service charge, which runs whether the flat is let or empty and is frequently the largest single deduction.
• Cooling, where it is billed separately from the service charge — and in some buildings a standing capacity charge applies even to an empty unit.
• Agency commission to find the tenant, at market practice of 5% of the annual rent.
• A management fee if somebody else runs the tenancy, which a non-resident owner in practice needs.
• Void months. The line most often left out, and the most expensive one: the fixed costs carry on through it.
• Everything inside your walls: appliances, the water heater, repainting between tenancies. A unit is handed over in lettable condition or it does not let.

The municipality housing fee sits on the rental value and is collected through the tenant's DEWA account. It is not your cost, but it is part of what the occupier pays to live there, and it therefore belongs in the conversation when a rent is negotiated.

Two things people get wrong

• Untaxed here does not mean untaxed everywhere. The UAE does not tax rental income; your country of tax residence may, and may also require a foreign asset to be declared whether or not tax is due. That question is settled at home.
• Disputes are won on paperwork. The rental tribunal at the Land Department is a specialist forum and a fast one, and nearly everything that reaches it turns on documents rather than merits: no registration, a notice with no proof of service, no inventory at move-in. Dated photographs and a signed inventory cost nothing and settle the most common argument there is.

Based on Dubai's tenancy legislation, the Land Department's rent-increase scale and standard letting practice on this market.