I analysed around 1M Dubai rental contracts (Ejari data) to see what's actually happening with rents
Hi.. I'm a tech consultancy founder, and I analysed the government Ejari rental data for Dubai. I looked at the last 12 months (Oct 2025 to Sep 2026) against the 12 months before, plus a 10-year view back to 2015. I work with data all day, so I wanted to see what the numbers say instead of relying on gut feel
The short version
- Around 994K contracts registered, down about 2% YoY
- Median rent is up 4.2% (AED 57K), and residential median is AED 65K, up 4.8%
- Rent per sq. ft. is up about 7.8% (AED 68 overall, AED 67 residential)
- For perspective, residential rent/sq. ft. bottomed at AED 39 in 2021 and has climbed every year since
Median rent by unit type (YoY)
- Studio: AED 40K (+5.3%)
- 1BR: AED 58K (+5.5%)
- 2BR: AED 77K (+5.0%)
- 3BR: AED 132K (+7.1%)
Other things I found interesting
- 55 of 59 larger areas saw rent per sq. ft. go UP (despite the hiccups?)
- Fastest risers: Dubai Investment Park Second (+24.5%), Al Goze Fourth (+17.1%), Dubai Investment Park First (+13.4%)
- Marsa Dubai (Marina) is up 12.5% per sq. ft.
- Business Bay has the most contracts overall (~46.5K), and JVC is the biggest residential community (~30.7K)
- Burj Khalifa area is the priciest per sq. ft. at AED 158. Palm Jumeirah has the highest median rent (AED 198K) because the units are bigger
- About half of all contracts are renewals (49.8%), and 93% of leases are ~12 months
- January is the busiest month for new contracts (10.4%) and June is the quietest (7.1%)
Caveats: this is registered contracts, so it includes renewals, and median rents can shift with the mix of units. Not financial advice; I'm just a data person yall, please keep that in mind. I did see another data guy work on the same data but EDA is an open box so im guessing some numbers that I have shared above might be useful.
I put everything into a PDF report with charts if anyone wants the full breakdown, let me know.