RERA Rental Index Dubai

The RERA rental index is the number that decides whether your landlord's rent increase is legal or not. It is the official Dubai Land Department benchmark, built from real rental and transaction data, that sets an average rent for a given area, property type, and bedroom count. At every renewal, Dubai's Real Estate Regulatory Agency compares your current rent against that average and returns one figure: the maximum percentage a landlord may add this cycle. This page covers the slab table itself, how to run the official calculator, and what both tenants and landlords are required to do with the result in 2026.

What the RERA rental index actually decides

The index does not set what a new tenant pays on a fresh contract. A landlord can list a vacant unit at whatever price the current market will bear, and a new tenant signing that lease has no RERA cap to lean on. What the index does control is renewal: if you already live in a unit and your landlord wants more money to keep you there, the increase they can legally ask for is capped by how far your current rent sits below the index average for a matching property. Below that gap, an increase is void even if both parties sign a new contract acknowledging it.

This trips people up when a tenancy changes hands mid-year, or when a unit is sublet through a management company rather than a private landlord. The index still applies. It follows the tenancy relationship, not the identity of who happens to be collecting the rent, so a managed building cannot sidestep the cap simply because a third party issues the renewal notice.

The RERA rent increase slab table, in full

RERA runs the comparison in five bands. Here is the table exactly as it applies in 2026.

Read it the way a landlord's accountant would. If your rent sits within 10% of what similar units in your area and bedroom count are fetching, the index treats you as already paying a fair rate, and no increase is legal this renewal. Only once the gap crosses into double digits does the slab open up, and it does so in fixed steps rather than a sliding scale a landlord can round up in their own favor.

As an example: say the calculator returns an average of AED 100,000 for a two bedroom apartment in your building's cluster, and your current rent is AED 82,000, about 18% below that average. Your landlord can add 5%. Full stop. Not the 10% a neighbor might mention, not the 15% that sounds fairer given how long you have lived there. The slab does not negotiate.

If your rent already sits within 10% of the index average, do not spend energy arguing with your landlord's number. The calculator agrees with them, and no increase is legal this cycle regardless of what the market "feels" like it should be.

How to run the RERA rental index calculator step by step

The calculator lives inside the Dubai REST app and on the Dubai Land Department's website, and it takes under two minutes once you have your tenancy contract in hand.

1. Open the Dubai REST app or the DLD rental index page and select the rent index calculator tool. 2. Choose the area or community where the property sits, matched as closely as the tool allows. 3. Select the property type, apartment or villa, and the number of bedrooms. 4. Enter your current annual rent as shown on your tenancy contract. 5. Read the result: the average rent for that profile and the maximum percentage increase it allows. 6. Save a screenshot or note the reference number before the renewal conversation starts.

Keep that result on hand. It is the single most useful document you can bring to a renewal negotiation, more useful than any comparison pulled from a listings site, because it is the number RERA itself will rely on if the disagreement ever escalates.

How much can a landlord increase rent in Dubai in 2026

Dubai rents are holding broadly steady through 2026 even with rental demand up by roughly 60%, and the market is shifting toward monthly payments and direct debit instead of the old post-dated cheque system. That combination changes where the pressure in a renewal conversation actually sits. Headline asking rents are not spiking the way demand growth alone might suggest, so landlords are not chasing runaway numbers on vacant units. What they are doing is pushing the maximum the slab table allows on every renewal where the gap supports it.

In a market where demand is up 60% but headline rents are not moving much, most of the pressure lands on renewal negotiations rather than asking prices. If you are renewing this year in a popular building in JVC or Business Bay, expect your landlord to ask for whatever the slab allows, not less, even if last year's increase was smaller. The shift toward monthly rent and direct debit adds a second, quieter change: landlords who once accepted four post-dated cheques now have to plan around monthly cash flow, and some are more willing to hold a rent steady in exchange for a tenant agreeing to the new payment structure.

What tenants can do with the calculator result

If the calculator shows your rent already sits within 10% of the average, you owe no increase, and you can say so in writing, citing the result. If it confirms a slab of 5%, 10%, 15%, or 20%, that is the ceiling, not a starting offer, so any figure above it is something to push back on immediately rather than treat as a point for negotiation. Where a landlord refuses to accept the calculator's own number, the dispute route runs through Dubai's rental dispute process rather than a private argument over email or WhatsApp, and the calculator printout is the evidence that opens that case.

The 90 day notice rule landlords must follow

A rent increase, or a decision not to renew, only takes effect if the landlord gives written notice at least 90 days before the current contract expires. Miss that window and the increase does not apply for this renewal cycle, no matter how correctly it was calculated on the index. This catches landlords out more often than tenants, because the calculator gives the right number, but the 90 day notice is a separate requirement that has nothing to do with the maths and everything to do with timing.

Before you walk into a renewal conversation with a figure you are not sure about, talk to one of our consultants and we will run the calculation with you and tell you honestly whether the number your landlord is asking for holds up. For the wider picture on tenancy contracts, deposits, and Ejari, our Dubai rental guide covers the rest of the process, and our Dubai real estate statistics page has the market context behind why rents are moving the way they are in 2026.

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