Dubai Rental Market Report 2026: Rents From 664K Ejari Contracts
This Dubai rental market report 2026 is built from registered tenancy contracts, not asking prices. It answers the questions tenants, analysts and investors actually ask: what is the average rent in Dubai, how do Dubai rent prices by area compare, and where does the city actually rent? The figures cover 664,309 residential Ejari contracts with start dates between 23 October 2025 and 22 October 2026, drawn from a database of 10,140,174 DLD-registered transactions (8,787,618 rental contracts and 1,352,556 sales). Every figure comes from registered records, the same transactions Bayut surfaces, delivered as JSON through the transactions endpoint.
A note on provenance before the numbers: every rental contract in Dubai is registered with the Dubai Land Department (DLD) through the Ejari system. DLD is the system of record. Those registered records are aggregated and surfaced by Bayut, and BayutAPI delivers them programmatically. So when this report says “registered rent,” it means the rent written into an Ejari contract — what tenants actually agreed to pay, not what a listing advertised.
What changed in the October 2026 update
The first edition of this report (June 2026) used 4.2 million records, which was the part of the dataset we had collected at the time. It also counted every contract type, so offices, shops and labour accommodation sat inside the “Dubai rent” figures. This edition fixes both:
- Complete data. The database now holds 10.1 million transactions, and the last-12-month window has 664,309 residential contracts instead of 599,685 contracts of all types.
- Homes only. Figures cover apartments, villas, townhouses, penthouses and hotel apartments. Offices, shops, warehouses and labour camps are excluded.
Some area medians moved a lot as a result, mostly because the June sample had an unrepresentative mix of unit sizes. For example, Dubai Marina’s median annual rent is AED 110,000 (June edition: AED 181,519), Downtown Dubai’s is AED 145,000 (June: AED 201,425) and the citywide median is AED 65,000 (June: AED 58,000). Use the figures below; the June ones are superseded.
The headline: average rent in Dubai
Across residential rental contracts in the last 12 months, the citywide median annual rent in Dubai is AED 65,000/year — about AED 5,417/month. On a size-adjusted basis, the median works out to AED 75.4/sqft/year (that is annual rent per square foot, not a sale price).
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Median annual rent | AED 65,000/year |
| Median monthly rent | AED 5,417/month |
| Middle 50% of contracts | AED 46,305–96,800/year |
| Median rent per sqft (annual) | AED 75.4/sqft/year |
| Change vs previous 12 months | +4.8% |
| Contracts analysed (last 12 months) | 664,309 |
Split by property type, the gap is wide: the median apartment rents for AED 60,000/year, while the median villa rents for AED 175,000/year — almost three times an apartment. That spread is the single most important reason a citywide average is misleading on its own. A studio in International City and a five-bedroom villa in The Meadows both count as “Dubai rent,” and they are an order of magnitude apart. The breakdowns below are where the report earns its keep.
The +4.8% compares the median of the last 12 months with the median of the 12 months before (633,750 contracts). It is a change in the median contract, so it also reflects shifts in which homes were let, not only price changes on identical units.
Median rent by bedroom
Bedroom count is the cleanest predictor of rent. Here is the median registered annual rent for each configuration, citywide:
| Configuration | Median annual rent | Median monthly rent | Contracts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | AED 40,000/year | AED 3,333/month | 122,034 |
| 1 bedroom | AED 58,000/year | AED 4,833/month | 246,055 |
| 2 bedroom | AED 78,000/year | AED 6,500/month | 192,323 |
| 3 bedroom | AED 132,000/year | AED 11,000/month | 61,546 |
| 4+ bedroom | AED 230,000/year | AED 19,167/month | 19,881 |
The steps from studio to 1-bedroom (AED 18,000/year) and from 1-bedroom to 2-bedroom (AED 20,000/year) are modest. The big jumps come later: a 3-bedroom costs AED 54,000/year more than a 2-bedroom, and a 4+ bedroom home another AED 98,000/year, which is where apartment living gives way to villa living and the type-level split above starts to dominate. One-bedroom apartments are the single largest segment, with 246,055 contracts — more than a third of the market.
Gross rental yield by area
Because the same database holds registered sales, we can set rents against what comparable homes actually sold for. The table below divides the median annual rent of 1-bedroom apartments by the median price of 1-bedroom apartments that changed hands as ready resales in the same 12 months. Off-plan sales are left out, because those homes cannot be rented yet.
| Area | 1-bed apartment median rent | 1-bed apartment median resale price | Gross yield |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jumeirah Village Circle (JVC) | AED 69,000/year | AED 990,000 | 7.0% |
| Jumeirah Lake Towers (JLT) | AED 80,000/year | AED 1,225,000 | 6.5% |
| Dubai Marina | AED 89,250/year | AED 1,544,396 | 5.8% |
| Business Bay | AED 85,000/year | AED 1,515,000 | 5.6% |
| Downtown Dubai | AED 111,156/year | AED 2,200,000 | 5.1% |
| Palm Jumeirah | AED 150,000/year | AED 3,100,000 | 4.8% |
The pattern broadly holds that the cheaper the entry price, the higher the gross yield. JVC returns 7.0% gross on a 1-bedroom; Palm Jumeirah returns 4.8%. Gross yield is before service charges, maintenance, vacancy and fees, so net returns are lower. We do not quote a single citywide yield, because it would compare rents from the whole city with resales concentrated in a few areas. Each area guide linked at the end of this report has the yield for every bedroom count.
Most expensive areas to rent in Dubai
These are the communities with the highest median registered annual rent (minimum 300 contracts in the last 12 months). They are dominated by villa and waterfront communities — the type-level numbers above explain why.
| Area | Median annual rent |
|---|---|
| Al Barari | AED 425,000/year |
| Bluewaters Island | AED 405,001/year |
| The Meadows | AED 400,000/year |
| Jumeirah Park | AED 330,000/year |
| The Villa | AED 300,000/year |
| The Lakes | AED 295,000/year |
| Al Manara | AED 260,000/year |
| Tilal Al Ghaf | AED 250,000/year |
| Arabian Ranches 2 | AED 250,000/year |
| Arabian Ranches | AED 250,000/year |
| Nad Al Sheba | AED 235,000/year |
The lowest entry here — Nad Al Sheba at AED 235,000/year — is still more than three and a half times the citywide median. These are not the communities most people rent in; they are the communities that set the ceiling.
Most affordable areas to rent in Dubai
At the other end, these communities carry the lowest median registered annual rent (same 300-contract minimum). They are where Dubai’s most accessible rental stock sits.
| Area | Median annual rent |
|---|---|
| Academic City | AED 22,900/year |
| Al Warsan | AED 37,000/year |
| Dubai Industrial City | AED 39,000/year |
| International City | AED 39,244/year |
| Al Khail Gate | AED 41,000/year |
| Muhaisnah | AED 41,999/year |
| Dubai Maritime City | AED 43,200/year |
| Dubai Investments Park (DIP) | AED 45,000/year |
| International City Phase 2 (Warsan 4) | AED 45,000/year |
| Deira | AED 47,601/year |
Academic City’s median of AED 22,900/year is roughly one-eighteenth of Al Barari. That spread inside a single city is exactly why “average rent in Dubai” only means something once you pin it to an area and a bedroom count.
Where Dubai actually rents: highest-volume communities
The most expensive and cheapest tables describe the edges. This one describes the middle of the market — the communities where the largest number of residential contracts were registered, with their median rent attached.
| Area | Registered contracts | Median annual rent |
|---|---|---|
| Deira | 62,536 | AED 47,601/year |
| Bur Dubai | 40,492 | AED 65,070/year |
| International City | 33,090 | AED 39,244/year |
| JVC | 32,020 | AED 66,000/year |
| Al Nahda (Dubai) | 29,154 | AED 54,000/year |
| Al Qusais | 25,255 | AED 48,000/year |
| Business Bay | 19,623 | AED 95,000/year |
| Dubai Silicon Oasis | 18,670 | AED 55,000/year |
| Discovery Gardens | 16,706 | AED 50,811/year |
| Al Barsha | 16,607 | AED 78,000/year |
| Dubai Marina | 15,266 | AED 110,000/year |
Deira alone accounts for 62,536 residential contracts — nearly one in ten homes let in Dubai — at a median of AED 47,601/year. The pattern is clear: Dubai’s rental volume is concentrated in affordable, established communities, not the glossy waterfront names. The communities that make headlines (Bluewaters, The Meadows) barely register on volume; the communities that house the city (Deira, Bur Dubai, International City) sit at or below the citywide median. JVC is the exception that proves the rule: a newer community that now rivals the old centres on volume at a near-median rent.
Rent per square foot leaders
Median rent per square foot strips out unit size and reveals which areas command the highest premium per foot of space. These figures are annual rent per sqft (AED/sqft/year), not sale prices.
| Area | Rent per sqft (annual) |
|---|---|
| Bluewaters Island | AED 268.9/sqft/year |
| Dubai Harbour | AED 169.7/sqft/year |
| Za’abeel | AED 142.6/sqft/year |
| City Walk | AED 140.9/sqft/year |
| Umm Suqeim | AED 139.5/sqft/year |
| Al Wasl | AED 136.9/sqft/year |
| Downtown Dubai | AED 133.8/sqft/year |
| Dubai Hills Estate | AED 133.6/sqft/year |
Note how this ranking differs from the most-expensive-by-total table. Downtown Dubai and Dubai Hills Estate do not make the top total-rent list, yet both charge more than AED 130/sqft/year, while several villa communities that top the total-rent table do not appear here at all. Total rent and rent-per-sqft answer different questions, which is why an analyst should pull both. The citywide median of AED 75.4/sqft/year is the baseline these areas are measured against.
Renewals vs new leases
Of the 664,309 residential contracts in the last 12 months, 62% were renewals rather than new leases — 410,149 renewals against 254,160 new contracts. The average contract length across the window was 12.4 months.
| Contract type | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Renewals | 410,149 | 62% |
| New leases | 254,160 | 38% |
| Average contract length | 12.4 months | — |
A renewal-heavy market is a relatively stable one: most tenancies are continuations, not churn. The renewal share is descriptive of how the market behaves — it tells you most tenants stayed put — rather than a price signal in itself. For anyone modelling occupancy or turnover, the new-lease count (254,160) is the cleaner measure of fresh demand entering the market.
Rental volume is climbing
Registered residential rental contracts have risen every year since 2019. The trend is not subtle.
| Year | Registered residential contracts |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 348,212 |
| 2020 | 366,389 |
| 2021 | 443,405 |
| 2022 | 507,010 |
| 2023 | 555,402 |
| 2024 | 596,146 |
| 2025 | 639,525 |
| 2026 (to 22 October) | 538,350 |
From 366,389 contracts in 2020 to 639,525 in 2025, registered residential rental volume grew by about 75% in five years. The 2026 figure is a partial-year count and should not be compared head-to-head with the full years above. Contracts are counted by their start date. The direction is consistent: more people are signing more registered leases in Dubai every year, which is the demand backdrop behind everything else in this report. For the sales-side counterpart to this trend, see our analysis of Dubai’s property market through data.
Method
- Source: DLD-registered Ejari rental contracts and sales, as surfaced by Bayut. Database of 10,140,174 records; this edition was computed on 26 October 2026.
- Window: contracts with start dates from 23 October 2025 to 22 October 2026; the comparison window is the 12 months before.
- Scope: apartments, villas, townhouses, penthouses and hotel apartments. Commercial and labour accommodation excluded.
- Rent: annual rent is the contract’s monthly amount × 12. Contracts below AED 5,000 or above AED 5 million a year are dropped as data errors.
- Medians: published only for slices with at least 30 contracts; area rankings require at least 300.
- Yield: median annual rent of 1-bedroom apartments ÷ median price of 1-bedroom apartments sold as ready resales in the same window and area.
How this data was compiled — get it yourself
Every number in this report came from one endpoint: transactions. It returns DLD-registered transactions — the same records Bayut surfaces — as clean JSON, filterable by purpose, area, property type, bedrooms, price, size, and time period. No bulk CSV, no OAuth token loop, no scraping. (For why that matters, see BayutAPI vs web scraping.)
The flow is two calls. First, resolve an area name to its location ID with the autocomplete endpoint:
curl --request GET \
--url 'https://uae-real-estate3.p.rapidapi.com/autocomplete?query=business%20bay' \
--header 'x-rapidapi-host: uae-real-estate3.p.rapidapi.com' \
--header 'x-rapidapi-key: YOUR_API_KEY'Then pass that ID to transactions with purpose=for-rent to pull registered rental contracts:
curl --request GET \
--url 'https://uae-real-estate3.p.rapidapi.com/transactions?purpose=for-rent&location_ids=5093&category_ids=residential&time_period=12m&page=1' \
--header 'x-rapidapi-host: uae-real-estate3.p.rapidapi.com' \
--header 'x-rapidapi-key: YOUR_API_KEY'To reproduce a median like the ones in this report, page through the rental contracts for an area and take the median annual rent. This transactions endpoint is the one BayutAPI endpoint that returns results under a hits key rather than properties:
import requests
from statistics import median
URL = "https://uae-real-estate3.p.rapidapi.com/transactions"
HEADERS = {
"x-rapidapi-host": "uae-real-estate3.p.rapidapi.com",
"x-rapidapi-key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
}
def median_rent(location_id: str, beds: str | None = None) -> dict:
"""Median registered annual rent for an area from the last 12 months."""
rents, page = [], 1
while True:
params = {
"purpose": "for-rent",
"location_ids": location_id,
"category_ids": "residential", # homes only, as in this report
"time_period": "12m",
"page": str(page),
}
if beds is not None:
params["beds"] = beds # "0" = studio; comma-separated allowed
resp = requests.get(URL, headers=HEADERS, params=params).json()
data = resp.get("data", {})
hits = data.get("hits", [])
rents += [h["price"] for h in hits if h.get("price")]
if page >= data.get("nbPages", 0) or not hits:
break
page += 1
if not rents:
return {"count": 0}
return {"count": len(rents), "median_annual_rent": round(median(rents))}
print(median_rent("5093")) # whole-area median
print(median_rent("5093", beds="0")) # studios onlyThe response shape mirrors the rest of the API — data.hits holds the contracts, with data.nbHits, data.page, and data.nbPages for pagination (20 records per page). Each hit carries transactionId, purpose, price (annual rent in AED for rentals), area, location, category, rooms, completionStatus, and date:
{
"success": true,
"data": {
"hits": [
{
"transactionId": "TX-88421",
"purpose": "for-rent",
"price": 110000,
"area": 950,
"location": "Business Bay",
"category": "apartments",
"rooms": 1,
"completionStatus": "completed",
"date": "2026-04-22"
}
],
"nbHits": 11822,
"page": 1,
"nbPages": 592
}
}The same endpoint also returns for-sale transactions if you switch purpose — which is how you pair rents with prices to compute rental yield, as in the yield table above. We walk through that calculation in analyzing UAE rental yields, and cover the underlying record types in our guide to Dubai real estate transaction data.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average rent in Dubai in 2026? The median registered annual rent for homes in Dubai over the last 12 months is AED 65,000/year (about AED 5,417/month), or AED 75.4/sqft/year, from 664,309 Ejari contracts. Apartments sit at a median of AED 60,000/year and villas at AED 175,000/year. These are medians from registered contracts, not advertised listing prices, and they are 4.8% higher than the 12 months before.
Which area is the most expensive to rent in Dubai? By median registered annual rent, Al Barari tops the list at AED 425,000/year, followed by Bluewaters Island (AED 405,001/year) and The Meadows (AED 400,000/year). The most affordable communities are Academic City (AED 22,900/year) and Al Warsan (AED 37,000/year).
How much is rent for a studio or 1-bedroom in Dubai?
Citywide, the median studio rents for AED 40,000/year (AED 3,333/month) and the median 1-bedroom for AED 58,000/year (AED 4,833/month). A 2-bedroom runs AED 78,000/year and a 3-bedroom AED 132,000/year. Pulling the figure for a specific community is one transactions endpoint call with beds set.
Which Dubai areas have the highest rental yield? Among the areas we cover in depth, JVC has the highest gross yield on 1-bedroom apartments at 7.0%, followed by JLT at 6.5% and Dubai Marina at 5.8%. Palm Jumeirah is lowest at 4.8%. Yields compare median rents with median ready-resale prices in the same area and are before costs.
Where does the data come from? Every rental contract in Dubai is registered with the Dubai Land Department through the Ejari system — DLD is the source of truth. Those registered records are aggregated and surfaced by Bayut, and BayutAPI delivers them as JSON. This is not a scraped listing dataset; it is registered transaction data.
Are renewals or new leases more common in Dubai? Renewals. Of the 664,309 residential contracts in the last 12 months, 62% (410,149) were renewals and 38% (254,160) were new leases, with an average contract length of 12.4 months — a sign of a relatively stable, low-churn rental market.
Area guides
Each guide has rents by bedroom, sale prices and yields for one community, plus the code to reproduce them:
- JLT (Jumeirah Lake Towers)
- JVC (Jumeirah Village Circle)
- Business Bay
- Dubai Marina
- Downtown Dubai
- Palm Jumeirah
- Al Barsha
Start building
- Read the transactions endpoint reference to query rental data live
- Resolve any community to its ID with the autocomplete endpoint
- Pair rents with prices in analyzing UAE rental yields
- Understand the source in Dubai Land Department (DLD) data
- Build a live view with market research dashboards
Ready to Build with UAE Real Estate Data?
Get your API key and start making requests in minutes. Free tier available with 900 requests per month.