Tenant tools
What does moving actually cost you?
Dubai's rent cap limits what a landlord can add at renewal — so the longer you stay, the further your rent falls behind the open market. That invisible discount is what you give up when you move.
Across Dubai, from 583,341 residential contracts
A new tenant pays
AED 88/sqft
A renewing tenant pays
AED 66/sqft
Staying put saves
25%
This is the rent cap accumulating. A landlord can only add so much at renewal, so every year a tenant stays, the gap between their rent and the open market widens. Before you hand in notice, that gap is what moving actually costs — on top of the agency fee, the deposit and the Ejari registration.
By area
Areas with at least 200 contracts on each side. A negative figure means renewals price above new lets there — usually a market where rents have been falling, so newcomers get the better deal.
What this is and isn’t
Residential only. Commercial leases run this gap in reverse — over the last twelve months renewals record a median of AED 82,500 against AED 25,000 for new lets, across 148,455 contracts, because the two sides are not the same stock — so mixing them in would put industrial zones at the top of a table about homes.
It compares two groups of contracts, not the same home over time: DLD’s rent data carries no unit identifier. So it answers “what do sitting tenants here pay versus newcomers”, not “what will your own rent do”. For that, check what your landlord can legally charge.