Dubai Rental Market Report 2026: 4.2M Ejari Contracts

BayutAPI Team · June 5, 2026

This Dubai rental market report 2026 is built from registered tenancy contracts, not asking prices. We analysed 4,234,764 DLD-registered transactions — of which 4,217,848 are rental (Ejari) contracts — to answer 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? Every figure below comes from registered records, the same transactions Bayut surfaces, delivered as clean JSON through the transactions endpoint. The medians are drawn from the last 12 months — a window of 599,685 contracts registered between 2025-05-16 and 2026-05-16.

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.

The headline: average rent in Dubai

Across all registered rental contracts in the last 12 months, the citywide median annual rent in Dubai is AED 58,000/year — roughly AED 4,833/month. On a size-adjusted basis, the median works out to AED 80/sqft/year (that is annual rent per square foot, not a sale price).

Metric	Value
Median annual rent	AED 58,000/year
Median monthly rent	AED 4,833/month
Median rent per sqft (annual)	AED 80/sqft/year
Contracts analysed (last 12 months)	599,685

Split by property type, the gap is wide: the median apartment rents for AED 60,000/year, while the median villa rents for AED 180,000/year — three times an apartment. That spread is the single most important reason a citywide average is misleading on its own. A studio in Al Quoz 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.

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
Studio	AED 36,465/year	AED 3,039/month
1 bedroom	AED 54,450/year	AED 4,538/month
2 bedroom	AED 85,000/year	AED 7,083/month
3 bedroom	AED 135,000/year	AED 11,250/month
4+ bedroom	AED 235,000/year	AED 19,583/month

The jump from studio to 1-bedroom is modest — about AED 18,000/year — but each step up after that adds roughly AED 30,000 to AED 100,000. Moving from a 3-bedroom to a 4+ bedroom home costs the median tenant an extra AED 100,000/year, which is where apartment living gives way to villa living and the type-level split above starts to dominate.

Most expensive areas to rent in Dubai

These are the communities with the highest median registered annual rent. They are dominated by villa and waterfront communities — the type-level numbers above explain why.

Area	Median annual rent
Bluewaters Island	AED 400,000/year
The Meadows	AED 400,000/year
Jumeirah Park	AED 335,000/year
The Villa	AED 300,000/year
The Lakes	AED 290,000/year
Tilal Al Ghaf	AED 260,000/year
Arabian Ranches	AED 250,000/year
Al Manara	AED 230,000/year
Palm Jumeirah	AED 227,795/year
Umm Suqeim	AED 220,000/year
Downtown Dubai	AED 201,425/year

The cheapest entry here — Downtown Dubai at AED 201,425/year — is still more than three 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. They are where Dubai’s most accessible rental stock sits.

Area	Median annual rent
Al Warsan	AED 19,385/year
Muhaisnah	AED 19,800/year
Al Quoz	AED 20,000/year
Hatta	AED 20,000/year
Jebel Ali	AED 28,183/year
Deira	AED 33,000/year
Al Khawaneej	AED 36,000/year
International City	AED 39,568/year
Discovery Gardens	AED 43,000/year

Al Warsan’s median of AED 19,385/year is roughly one-twentieth of Bluewaters Island. That 20x 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 contracts were registered, with their median rent attached.

Area	Registered contracts	Median annual rent
Deira	110,095	AED 33,000/year
International City	36,766	AED 39,568/year
Bur Dubai	31,929	AED 65,000/year
Al Quoz	30,276	AED 20,000/year
Muhaisnah	27,370	AED 19,800/year
Jebel Ali	21,082	AED 28,183/year
Al Qusais	16,058	AED 55,000/year
JVC	15,410	AED 85,000/year
Al Karama	14,597	AED 64,625/year
Business Bay	11,822	AED 110,000/year
Dubai Silicon Oasis	11,218	AED 60,000/year

Deira alone accounts for 110,095 registered contracts — more than the next three communities combined — at a median of just AED 33,000/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, International City, Bur Dubai) sit well below the citywide median.

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)
Dragon City	AED 297.10/sqft/year
Bluewaters Island	AED 268.20/sqft/year
Dubai Harbour	AED 186.50/sqft/year
Dubai Internet City	AED 160.00/sqft/year
Umm Suqeim	AED 159.80/sqft/year
Downtown Dubai	AED 158.70/sqft/year
Za’abeel	AED 154.60/sqft/year
JBR	AED 144.80/sqft/year

Note how this ranking differs from the most-expensive-by-total table. Dragon City tops rent per square foot at AED 297.10/sqft/year despite not appearing among the highest total rents — a sign of small, intensively-let units. Total rent and rent-per-sqft answer different questions, which is why an analyst should pull both. The citywide median of AED 80/sqft/year is the baseline these areas are measured against.

Renewals vs new leases

Of the 599,685 contracts registered in the last 12 months, 54% were renewals rather than new leases — 323,671 renewals against 277,377 new contracts. The average contract length across the window was 13 months.

Contract type	Count	Share
Renewals	323,671	54%
New leases	277,377	46%
Average contract length	13 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 (277,377) is the cleaner measure of fresh demand entering the market.

Rental volume is climbing

Registered rental contracts have risen every year since 2020. The trend is not subtle.

Year	Registered rental contracts
2020	286,645
2021	360,641
2022	415,856
2023	466,286
2024	508,521
2025	581,079
2026 (partial)	232,669

From 286,645 contracts in 2020 to 581,079 in 2025, registered rental volume has roughly doubled in five years. The 2026 figure (232,669) is a partial-year count and should not be compared head-to-head with the full years above. The direction, though, 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.

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=8143&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,
            "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("8143"))          # whole-area median
print(median_rent("8143", beds="0"))  # studios only

The 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. We walk through that exact 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 across all Dubai rental contracts in the last 12 months is AED 58,000/year (about AED 4,833/month), or AED 80/sqft/year. Apartments sit at a median of AED 60,000/year and villas at AED 180,000/year. These are medians from registered Ejari contracts, not advertised listing prices.

Which area is the most expensive to rent in Dubai? By median registered annual rent, Bluewaters Island and The Meadows top the list at AED 400,000/year each, followed by Jumeirah Park at AED 335,000/year. The most affordable communities are Al Warsan (AED 19,385/year) and Muhaisnah (AED 19,800/year).

How much is rent for a studio or 1-bedroom in Dubai? Citywide, the median studio rents for AED 36,465/year and the median 1-bedroom for AED 54,450/year. A 2-bedroom runs AED 85,000/year and a 3-bedroom AED 135,000/year. Pulling the figure for a specific community is one transactions endpoint call with beds set.

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 599,685 contracts registered in the last 12 months, 54% (323,671) were renewals and 46% (277,377) were new leases, with an average contract length of 13 months — a sign of a relatively stable, low-churn rental market.

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

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