Process guides · sourced to DLD, RERA and the Rental Disputes Centre
Three processes most people only meet once: leasing a unit and registering it, reselling as a cash or mortgaged buyer, and the law on asking a tenant to vacate. Written from the governing legislation and the published procedures, with the source named at each step so you can check it yourself.
Resident & investor guide library
Those 17 advisory guides live in a separate, verified library — WhatsApp number verification unlocks all of them for 24 hours. This page only carries the raw official DLD/RERA/Ejari forms above.
Guide 01
Ejari — Arabic for "my rent" — is the Dubai Land Department's tenancy registration system. Registering a lease on Ejari is what converts a private agreement between two parties into a contract the state recognises. It is not paperwork for its own sake: without an Ejari certificate you cannot open a DEWA account, cannot sponsor family residence visas against the tenancy, and have no standing to bring a claim at the Rental Disputes Centre. A landlord who will not register Ejari is a landlord you should walk away from.
Annual rent, the number of cheques, what furnishing is included, who pays chiller, and the handover date. Cheque count is your main lever — see the calculator on the contact page for how it moves the negotiation.
Cheques are post-dated against the same annual rent, so the count changes only the timing, never the total. Security deposit is conventionally 5% of annual rent unfurnished and 10% furnished, held refundable against damage beyond fair wear.
Filed by the landlord or the managing agent, through the Dubai REST app or a Real Estate Services Trustee Centre. You need the tenancy contract, both parties' Emirates ID or passport, the title deed, and the DEWA premise number. The certificate carries both your Ejari number and the nine-digit premise number.
Source: Dubai Land Department / Ejari, via the Dubai REST app.
Electricity and water are activated with the Ejari number and the premise number. The security deposit is refundable — AED 2,000 for an apartment, AED 4,000 for a villa — plus a one-time activation charge of roughly AED 155. Supply is normally connected within 15 working hours of payment. Non-residential premises are assessed on expected consumption rather than a flat figure.
Source: DEWA move-in service, published 2026 schedule.
These two are confirmed per community rather than published as a single figure. Chilled water is supplied by whichever operator serves your community — Empower, Emicool, Tabreed or a developer-appointed provider — and each sets its own deposit, connection charge and consumption tariff. Piped gas registration works the same way. We confirm both in writing for your exact building before you sign.
du or Etisalat internet and landline are charged per the plan you choose, with installation varying by package and building infrastructure. Separately, Dubai Municipality levies a housing fee of 5% of annual rent, collected monthly through your DEWA bill rather than as a separate demand — it surprises almost every first-time tenant.
Post-dated cheques are still the market norm, but Dubai now supports Direct Debit under the Central Bank's UAEDDS scheme, integrated directly into Ejari through noqodi. The rent schedule is registered against the tenancy contract and collected automatically from the tenant's account, which removes the cheque-bounce exposure on both sides.
The landlord or managing company registers a noqodi wallet and completes KYC, links it for Direct Debit, adds the beneficiary account in Ejari, then defines the payment schedule at contract creation or renewal and submits it to noqodi. The tenant then signs the Direct Debit Authority form, which noqodi forwards to the tenant's bank.
Central Bank approval is stated as 48 hours, extendable to five days. If a collection fails, three retry attempts are made across four additional days from the scheduled date; beyond that the payment is rejected and a fresh registration is required. A stopped payment cannot be re-initiated, though stopping carries no charge. Payment dates cannot currently be amended once submitted.
Who pays for it. The noqodi manual states a monthly subscription of AED 1,000. That sits with the property management company or landlord, not the tenant, and like every figure on this site it is subject to change \u2014 confirm the current position with noqodi. Direct Debit is an alternative to cheques, not a requirement. The full manual is available in our download centre.
At renewal: any change to rent, cheque count or terms requires 90 days' written notice before expiry. Rent increases are capped by Decree No. 43 of 2013 on a banded scale tied to how far below the RERA rental index your current rent sits, and no increase is permitted at all where the rent is within 10% of the market rate for comparable units. Check your position on the RERA rental index calculator before accepting any proposed increase.
Guide 02
A secondary-market sale in Dubai runs through the Dubai Land Department and completes at a Real Estate Services Trustee Centre. The route differs depending on whether the buyer is paying cash and whether either side has a mortgage on the property.
Form F is the DLD's Memorandum of Understanding for a sale. It records price, deposit, timelines and who bears which cost. It is executed through the Dubai REST system.
Conventionally 10% of the price, held by the Trustee Centre or the registered agent rather than paid directly to the seller.
The developer confirms service charges are clear and raises no objection to the transfer. Fees are set by the developer individually and vary widely — we confirm the figure for your specific project.
Both parties attend or send an attested power of attorney. The DLD transfer fee of 4% is settled, the manager's cheque is handed over, and a new title deed is issued in the buyer's name the same day.
Obtain a written pre-approval before signing Form F. Minimum down payment is 20% for expatriate residents, 15% for UAE and GCC nationals, and 30% for non-resident investors.
The lender appoints its own valuer, roughly AED 2,500 to AED 3,500. Where the valuation lands below the agreed price, the shortfall is funded in cash or the price is renegotiated.
Mortgage registration with the DLD costs 0.25% of the loan plus AED 290, and the lender's arrangement fee typically runs 0.5% to 1% of the facility.
The seller's bank issues a liability letter stating the outstanding balance. In the common structure the buyer settles that balance, the seller's mortgage is discharged, and the property is blocked in the buyer's favour at the DLD so it cannot be sold to anyone else while the release is processed. This is the highest-risk phase of a Dubai resale and the reason both sides use a registered brokerage and the Trustee Centre rather than settling privately.
Verify independently. Transfer procedures and fees are published by the Dubai Land Department and are the authoritative source. Check the current schedule on the DLD service catalogueue or the Dubai REST app, and confirm developer NOC and service charge figures directly with the developer, before you commit funds.
Guide 03
The landlord and tenant relationship in Dubai is governed by Law No. 26 of 2007, as amended by Law No. 33 of 2008, with disputes heard by the Rental Disputes Centre at the Dubai Land Department. The law separates two entirely different routes, and confusing them is the most common reason a landlord loses at the RDC.
A landlord may seek eviction before expiry only on specific grounds, of which unpaid rent is the most common. The landlord must first serve 30 days' written notice to remedy. If the tenant does not cure the breach within that period, the landlord may file at the RDC. Other grounds include unlawful use of the premises, subletting without consent, and alterations that endanger the property.
At the end of the term a landlord may seek possession on four grounds only:
Each of these requires twelve months' written notice served through a Notary Public or by registered mail. The period runs from the date of service, not the date the notice was written.
Notice served by email, SMS or WhatsApp is not valid for these grounds, and neither is ordinary courier. An improperly served notice is commonly struck down by the RDC, and the tenancy renews on the same terms.
Check three things before doing anything: whether it was served through a Notary Public or registered mail, which Article 25 ground it cites, and whether the timing matches that ground. If any element is wrong, keep the notice and every piece of correspondence and file at the Rental Disputes Centre. Do not vacate until you have established that the notice is valid.
This is general information, not legal advice. Legislation is amended and RDC practice develops. Verify the current position through the Dubai Land Department and the Rental Disputes Centre directly, and take advice from a licensed UAE advocate before acting on any notice — whether serving one or receiving one. We are a licensed brokerage, not a law firm, and we will say so before we say anything else.
Free Download
All four pillars in one PDF — emirate-by-emirate pricing, yield tables, the full cost stack, Golden Visa pathways and the nine-corridor tax comparison. Download link appears on the confirmation page.
Dynamic Properties LLC · RERA ORN 23546 · P.O. Box 124049, Dubai
+971 55 227 7866 · tyagi@estatify360.com
WeChat ID: AT_DXB
We use cookies to measure marketing performance. Analytics and advertising storage stay off until you accept.
Advisory assistant
Dynamic Properties · RERA ORN 23546