Average Rent in Dubai by Area and Bedroom, 2026

Data verified 31 August 2026. Dubai Land Department registered transactions via Bayut TruView, rolling 12 months to August 2026.

This page shows what tenants in Dubai actually signed for, not what landlords asked for. Every figure below comes from tenancy contracts registered with the Dubai Land Department. The sample is 561,851 registered contracts across 53 communities, and it is refreshed on a rolling monthly cycle.

That distinction matters more than most people realise. Portal listings show asking rents. An asking rent is what a landlord hopes for. A registered contract is what a tenant agreed to and Ejari recorded. The two numbers are not the same, and in a market moving as fast as Dubai the gap can be wide.

How to read these tables

• Source. Dubai Land Department registered rent contracts, surfaced through Bayut TruView. Rolling last twelve months.
• These are averages, not medians. A handful of very large or very cheap units pulls the average. Where the contract count is small, treat the number as indicative only.
• New contracts and renewals are mixed together. Renewals are capped by the Dubai Smart Rental Index and the RERA rent calculator, so they sit below new lettings. A community with mostly renewals will show a lower average than a new tenant will actually be quoted.
• Rent per sqft is annual. Divide by twelve for a monthly figure.
• Change is versus the same twelve month window a year earlier. Not month on month.

Studio rent in Dubai by community

Studios are the highest volume rental product in Dubai and the highest priced per square foot. Deira alone registers more studio contracts in a year than most communities register across all unit types combined.

One bedroom rent in Dubai by community

One bedroom apartments are the deepest segment of the Dubai rental market. Deira and Jumeirah Village Circle are the two largest one bedroom markets in the city and they sit at opposite ends of the price range.

Two bedroom rent in Dubai by community

Two bedroom demand concentrates in the older mid market districts. Al Nahda registers more two bedroom contracts than one bedroom contracts, which is unusual and reflects a family tenant base rather than a sharer base.

Three bedroom rent in Dubai by community

Three bedroom apartment stock is thin in most new communities. Where the contract count is under 300 the average is easily moved by a handful of large units, so read those rows with care.

The rule nobody publishes: small units cost more per square foot

Across every community in this dataset where both figures exist, without a single exception, a studio rents for more per square foot than a one bedroom in the same community. Not most communities. All of them. A studio is not a cheap apartment. It is the most expensive space in the building on a per square foot basis.

The rule holds most but not all of the way up the size ladder. In a small number of prime communities the largest apartments sit in the best towers with the best views, so the premium attaches to size rather than to efficiency and the pattern inverts. Downtown Dubai is the clearest case. If you are underwriting a purchase in a community where the three bedroom rate per square foot sits above the one bedroom rate, the standard assumption that small is efficient does not hold and you should model the specific tower rather than the community.

For a tenant the arithmetic is concrete. In Jumeirah Village Circle the average studio contract is AED 49,550 a year at AED 112 per sqft. The average one bedroom is AED 70,459 at AED 88 per sqft. The step up costs real money, but it buys several hundred more square feet at a lower rate per foot. Whether that is worth it depends on whether you will use the space. The per dirham efficiency is not close.

For landlords the same arithmetic runs the other way. Studios and one bedrooms produce more rent per square foot of built area, which is why developers keep building them and why the yield table below behaves the way it does.

Which way are rents actually going right now

Every table above uses a rolling twelve month window. That is the right base because the sample is deep, but a twelve month average is a lagging number. It still carries last year’s increases inside it. If the market turned four months ago, the twelve month figure will not show it for a long time.

So we also pull the same Dubai Land Department contracts over a six month and a three month window and put all three side by side. This is the table nobody else publishes, and it does not say what the headlines say.

Read the direction column. On the twelve month window every single community in this dataset is positive. On the three month window, 38 of 53 of them have gone negative. Dubai Marina prints +2.0 percent over twelve months and -16.5 percent over three. Jumeirah Beach Residence prints +3.4 and -14.2. Business Bay prints +2.3 and -10.4.

The split is not random. It is by price band. The prime and upper mid market has turned: Marina, JBR, Downtown, Business Bay, Dubai Hills, Creek Harbour, JLT, Palm Jumeirah. The affordable districts have held: Deira, Bur Dubai, Al Nahda, Dubai South, Dubailand Residence Complex, Motor City. A landlord in Marina and a landlord in Deira are in two different markets right now, and the citywide average tells neither of them anything useful.

Three honest caveats before you act on this

• Seasonality is inside the three month number. The three month window compares this summer against this spring, and Dubai has a real summer lull in new lettings. Some of the fall is seasonal rather than structural. That is why we show six months as well: it spans both seasons, and in the prime districts it is already negative.
• Smaller windows mean smaller samples. A three month figure for a community with a few hundred contracts moves more easily than a twelve month figure built on thousands. We suppress the three month column where the sample falls under 200 contracts.
• Falling averages are not the same as falling rent on your unit. Averages move when the mix of what gets let changes, not only when prices change. A quarter with more studios and fewer three bedrooms will print a lower average without a single landlord dropping a price.

With all three caveats applied, the direction is still clear and it is still worth saying out loud: the twelve month numbers everybody is quoting describe a market that has already changed. If you are renewing in a prime tower this quarter, you have more room than the headlines suggest. If you are a landlord in one of those buildings, holding out for last year’s rent is now a decision with a cost attached.

Where rent rose fastest over the last twelve months

The pattern is consistent. The communities moving fastest are mid market, well connected, and were cheap enough a year ago that a large percentage move is a small dirham move. None of the prime districts appear in this list.

Where rent moved least

The slowest movers are the established prime and near prime districts. These are not weak markets. They are mature markets where supply has caught up with demand and the easy growth is behind them.

Gross rental yield on transacted data

Almost every yield figure published about Dubai divides an asking rent by an asking price. Both numbers are aspirational and the error compounds. The table below does something different. It divides registered rent per square foot by registered sale price per square foot for ready property only, both from Dubai Land Department transactions, both over the same twelve month window. No size assumptions are involved, because square feet appear on both sides of the division and cancel out.

Why we exclude off plan from the price side

You cannot rent an apartment that has not been built. The rent side of a yield calculation is always ready stock, so the price side has to be ready stock too. Dubai Land Department sale transactions mix ready resale with off plan launches, and in most communities off plan sells at a premium to ready. In Jumeirah Village Circle, all sale transactions average AED 1,517 per square foot while ready only transactions average AED 1,319. That is a 13 percent gap. Any yield built on the blended figure is understated by roughly that much, and in off plan heavy communities the distortion is larger.

What is still not in these numbers

• This is a gross yield. It is before service charges, before agency fees, before the five percent Dubai Land Department registration on the rent contract, before maintenance and before any void period. Service charges in Dubai commonly run between AED 12 and AED 30 per square foot per year depending on the building. On a mid market one bedroom that alone can take roughly a percentage point off the gross figure.
• Averages hide the spread. Within a single community the best building and the worst building can be 25 percent apart on both rent and price.
• Thin samples are excluded. Where fewer than forty sale transactions exist for a unit type we show n/a rather than a number built on almost nothing.

We publish the number the transactions support, not the number that sells. If a broker quotes you a yield, ask which rent and which price produced it, ask whether the price was ready stock or off plan, and ask whether the service charge was deducted. Those three questions move most published Dubai yield figures by more than a percentage point in one direction or the other. On registered contracts against ready sale prices, International City is the highest yielding apartment market in this dataset at 8.6% gross, and even that is before costs.

What this data cannot tell you

• It cannot tell you the rent for a specific building. Community averages span new towers and fifteen year old stock.
• It cannot separate furnished from unfurnished. Furnished units carry a premium of roughly 10 to 20 percent and they sit inside these averages.
• It cannot tell you whether a contract was a first letting or a renewal held down by the Smart Rental Index. In a community with long tenancies the average understates what a new tenant pays.
• It cannot tell you the cheque count. A rent quoted on one cheque is usually 5 to 10 percent below the same rent on twelve cheques, and the contract records only the total.

Frequently asked questions

Is this asking rent or actual rent?

Actual rent. Every figure comes from a tenancy contract registered with the Dubai Land Department. No listing prices are used anywhere on this page.

What is the cheapest community to rent an apartment in Dubai?

On registered contracts, International City. A studio averages AED 30,704 a year and a one bedroom AED 42,238. Deira studios are marginally cheaper at AED 30,146 but the Deira one bedroom average is higher at AED 48,545.

Why is my landlord asking more than the average shown here?

Three likely reasons. The average mixes renewals with new lettings and renewals are capped. The average mixes older stock with new towers. And the average mixes furnished with unfurnished. Check the RERA rent calculator for the legal position on a renewal, and compare like for like buildings on a new letting.

Which Dubai community has the best rental yield?

On registered rent over ready sale prices, International City at 8.6% gross across all apartment types. Remember that gross is before service charge, and service charge as a share of rent is highest in exactly the cheap communities where the headline yield looks best.

How often is this page updated?

Every thirty days. The data behind these tables is stored separately from the article and refreshed on a schedule, so the date stamp at the top of this page is the date the numbers were last verified, not the date the article was written.

Talk to us before you sign

Cresco Real Estate is a RERA registered brokerage, ORN 34288. If you are renting, we will tell you where the number you have been quoted sits against the registered contracts for that building, not just that community. If you are buying to let, we will show you the gross yield and the net yield with the service charge for that specific tower deducted. Both conversations are free and neither requires you to list with us.

More Dubai transaction data

Two companion pages built from the same DLD registered transaction data. Villa rent and villa prices in Dubai by community covers the villa and townhouse market by bedroom count with gross yields on ready stock. Luxury property in Dubai, AED 10 million and above lists every community registering sales in the eight figure bracket.