How to check what tenants really pay in your building in Dubai

Read the tenancy contracts registered with Dubai Land Department (DLD). There are three free ways to do it.

• DLD’s own website: the official records. You search by area and compare the leases yourself.
• The property portals: Property Finder and Bayut list registered contracts by building.
• Our Rent Check: you enter the building, the bedrooms and a rent. It tells you whether that rent is above or below what new tenants signed.

All three use DLD’s records. They differ in how much work they leave to you.

Because an advert shows what a landlord hopes to get. A registered contract shows what a tenant agreed to pay. A flat can stay advertised for weeks at a rent no tenant has accepted. A signed lease is a rent that somebody did accept.

They come from tenancy contracts registered with DLD through its Ejari system. The published records show no names and no flat numbers.

Each record in DLD’s open data shows:

• the registration date, the start date and the end date;
• whether the contract is new or a renewal;
• the area and the project, which is the building or development;
• the yearly rent, the size and the number of rooms.

So you can see that a one-bedroom flat of a certain size in a building was let at a certain rent. You cannot see who rents it, or which flat it is.

Open DLD’s Real Estate Data page and choose the “Rents” tab. It is free to use.

1. Set the “From Date” and the “To Date”.
2. Under “Version”, choose “New”. Under “Usage”, choose “Residential”. Under “Property Type”, choose “Flat”.
3. Choose the area. DLD uses official area names: Dubai Marina is filed under “Marsa Dubai”, Jumeirah Village Circle under “Al Barsha South Fourth” and Downtown Dubai under “Burj Khalifa”.
4. Tick “I’m not a robot” and press “Search”. “Download as CSV” saves the results as a file that opens in Excel.
5. Find your building in the “Project” column. Compare the “Annual Amount” of flats with the same number of rooms.

Good to know:

• Sizes are in square metres. Multiply by 10.76 to get square feet.
• “Annual Amount” is the rent for twelve months. “Contract Amount” is the total for the contract’s own length, which can be shorter or longer than a year.
• Many records have no building name, so they cannot be matched to a building.
• The page covers the current year. For earlier years it points to data.dubai.

Property Finder and Bayut both list registered rental contracts by area and by building. Both pages opened without signing in when we checked on 10 November 2026.

• Property Finder, under Transactions, “Rented”: the registration date, the rent, the start date, new or renewed, the size and the bedrooms. A building’s page also gives one average for new contracts and one for renewals. The page says its data is sourced from DLD.
• Bayut, under Dubai Transactions, “Rent”: the start date, new or renewal, the rent, the bedrooms and the size, with a switch to show new contracts only. Bayut says its data comes from DLD with unusual records removed, so its figures may differ from DLD’s website.

On 10 November 2026, both lists already showed contracts dated 9 November. Narrow the list to your building, your number of bedrooms and new contracts only. An average for a whole building mixes flats of different sizes.

It answers one question in one step: is this rent above or below what new tenants signed in this building?

• Pick the building and the number of bedrooms, and enter a yearly rent. The size is optional. If you give it, leases within 15% of that size are used when there are five of them.
• It takes the latest five new leases for those bedrooms in that building, started in the last six months, and compares your rent with the middle one. Renewals are left out.
• It lists the five leases it used, with their start dates, rents and sizes.

The Rent Check is free and needs no sign-up. A building appears only when DLD’s records name it and it has at least five such leases. The date the records were loaded is shown under the tool, so check it.

Use the one that fits your question.

• Is this rent fair for this flat? The Rent Check: one step and one answer, with the leases behind it.
• What were the latest contracts in my building? A portal’s list, narrowed to your building and bedrooms.
• I want every record, to do my own sums. DLD’s page, with the download.

Whichever you use, check three things: new leases and not renewals, the same number of bedrooms with a similar size, and the date of the records.

New leases, if you want to know what a flat rents for today. When a tenant renews, any increase is limited by Decree No. (43) of 2013, so a renewal shows an older agreement carried forward.

All three ways let you separate them: DLD’s “Version” filter, the portals’ new and renewal labels, and the Rent Check, which uses new leases only.

No. The calculator is for renewals. It is not a list of signed leases. DLD’s Rental Index asks for your contract end date, the property type and your current yearly rent. It finds the property by its DEWA premise number, your Ejari contract number or the area.

Under Decree No. (43) of 2013, the most a landlord can add at renewal depends on how far your rent is below the average for similar units. That average comes from the rent index approved by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA).

Use the calculator to check a renewal increase. Use signed leases to see what new tenants pay. For the renewal rules, see our guide: When can my landlord increase the rent in Dubai?

Then do not rely on one or two of them. A single lease can be unusual: a furnished flat, a larger layout or a much better view.

Look at the same number of bedrooms in similar buildings in the same community, on a portal’s list or DLD’s page. The Rent Check gives no figure until a building has five new leases for that bedroom count in the last six months.

Before you sign, compare the asking rent with the latest new leases for the same bedrooms in the building. If the asking rent is higher, ask the agent what explains it: a higher floor, a better view, furniture or upgrades. If nothing does, you have a fair reason to offer less.

If you are renewing, the renewal rules in question 9 decide what your landlord may ask, not this figure.

Set your asking rent from what new tenants signed, not from other adverts.

• If the flat has stood empty, read Apartment not renting in Dubai? What to change first.
• If you work with an agent, send them How to price a rental listing in Dubai: a guide for agents.

Flats for rent on distress.ae are listed by agents only, at or below the Rent Check figure, and listing is free for agents. Tenants see approved flats on the For rent page.