Guides · Dubai
Dubai property, explained
Short answers to the things people type when they are about to rent, buy or move in — the registry every lease goes through, the rule that caps the rent, the fees on the day, the number on the door. Each one a few hundred words with the figure in it, regulation stated as regulation and convention marked as convention, and a link down to the page that carries the live number.
Renting
The registry every lease goes through, and the rule that caps the rent at renewal.
Ejari
The Dubai Land Department’s registry of tenancy contracts — why every lease is registered, who does it, what it costs, and what you cannot do without the certificate.
Read →September 2026
The RERA rental index
The rule that decides how much a Dubai landlord may raise the rent at renewal, the calculator that applies it, and the ninety days’ notice that makes it stick.
Read →September 2026
Buying
What a purchase costs on the day, and how the two kinds of purchase differ.
What it costs to buy in Dubai
Everything a buyer pays on top of the price, in cash, on the day — the Dubai Land Department’s fees, the commission, the bank’s charges — and a worked example so the total is a figure, not a feeling.
Read →September 2026
Off-plan or resale
A home bought from the developer before it is built, against a home with a title deed and a tenant’s footprints in it: how the money, the paperwork and the risk differ.
Read →September 2026
Living here
The everyday admin of a Dubai address.
Makani numbers
Dubai’s ten-digit address: one number for every building entrance in the city, what it is for, how to find yours, and the three other numbers it gets confused with.
Read →September 2026
Deciding where, rather than how? The area guides take Dubai community by community, with recorded prices and rents. The calculators do the two sums every buyer ends up doing — a mortgage repayment and a rental yield — with the fee and deposit tables beside them.