The Dubai eviction notice

An eviction notice in Dubai is the one document that can end a tenancy against the tenant's will, and the law is precise about it. Law No. 26 of 2007, as amended by Law No. 33 of 2008, gives a landlord exactly two routes to a tenant's departure: a notice of twelve months, for one of four reasons, that takes effect at the end of the tenancy; and a notice of thirty days, for a breach the law lists, that can end it during the term. There is no third. A landlord who simply wants the home back, or who could let it for more to a stranger, has no notice to serve, however long, and a tenant who is served one that names no lawful reason can stay.

When someone in Dubai says "eviction notice" they almost always mean the first kind — the twelve-month notice, served through a notary public or by registered post — because it is the only way a landlord can recover a home from a tenant who pays the rent and keeps the tenancy contract. It is also the notice most argued over at the Rental Dispute Centre, usually on one of two questions: was it served the right way, and was the reason real.

The twelve-month notice

Article 25(2) of the law lets a landlord demand the home back at the end of the tenancy in four cases, and only four:

The notice has to say which of the four it is, and it has to give the tenant at least twelve months before the date they are asked to leave — twelve months from the day the notice is served, not from the end of the contract. It must be served through a notary public or by registered post; a letter handed over at the door, an email, a WhatsApp message or a line in the renewal contract is not an eviction notice and the centre will not treat it as one. Both halves are strict. A notice served the right way for a reason the law does not list is void, and so is a notice for a lawful reason served the wrong way, and in either case the clock has not started.

Serving the notice does not end the contract early. If the tenancy expires inside the twelve months, it renews as it would have anyway — the tenant stays on the same terms, or on a rent raised within the RERA rental index on ninety days' notice — and the eviction date arrives when the notice says it does. A tenant under notice pays the rent, keeps the home and can hold the landlord to every term until that day.

The thirty-day notice

Article 25(1) is the other route, and it is for a tenant who has broken the tenancy. The landlord may ask the centre to end it during the term where the tenant:

• Has not paid the rent, or part of it, thirty days after a written demand to pay
• Has sublet the property, or part of it, without the landlord's written consent
• Uses the property, or lets others use it, for an unlawful purpose or one against public order or morals
• Has damaged the property, or altered it in a way that endangers it, deliberately or through neglect, or allowed others to
• Uses it for a purpose other than the one it was let for, or in breach of the planning and building rules for the land
• Has failed, thirty days after being told to in writing, to meet any obligation under the contract or the law

Two further grounds belong to the landlord's side of the ledger rather than the tenant's: a property in danger of collapse, proved by a Dubai Municipality report, and a demolition the emirate's own development plans require. A commercial lease adds a ground for premises left empty for thirty days running or ninety in a year. Each notice under this article goes the same way as the twelve-month one, through a notary public or by registered post, and a case at the centre follows if the tenant does not put things right or leave. Non-payment is the ground the centre sees most and decides fastest, because a returned cheque and a dated demand leave little to argue about.

What the notice cannot do

It cannot give a reason the law does not list. Wanting the home back, a better tenant, a higher rent, a relative's friend, a short-term let — none of these is a ground, and a notice built on one is worth nothing. It cannot be waived: a clause on the additional-terms page in which the tenant agrees to leave on sixty days' notice, or gives up the twelve months, is void at the centre, because the law is not opted out of on page four. It cannot raise the rent: the twelve months run under the same index and the same ninety-day rule as any other year. And it cannot be enforced by the landlord's own hand. The locks are not changed, the DEWA is not cut, the belongings are not moved; the centre ends a tenancy and the police attend its execution department's order, and a landlord who tries it himself has started a second case against himself.

After the twelve months

Most tenants under a valid notice leave on the date, and the Ejari is cancelled behind them. Where a tenant does not, the landlord files at the Rental Dispute Centre with the contract, its Ejari certificate, the title deed, the notice and the notary's or the post office's proof of when it was served. The filing fee is 3.5% of the annual rent, between AED 500 and AED 20,000. The case goes through conciliation, then a judgment, and an eviction judgment can always be appealed whatever the rent, because the stakes are a home. The decree's targets are fifteen days for conciliation and thirty for each judgment; in practice an uncontested eviction takes a few months from filing to the execution department's order, and a contested one longer.

Then the law looks back. A landlord who recovered a home to live in it, or to house a relative, may not let it to anyone else for two years from the day it was recovered — three for a commercial property — unless the centre allows a shorter period, and a tenant who finds the home back on the market inside that time may claim compensation. A landlord who served notice to sell and never sold, or to renovate and never lifted a tool, has served a notice for a reason that was not real, and the centre hears that case too. The four reasons are not a menu; they are things the landlord has to have meant.

When the home is sold

Selling the home does not end the tenancy. The buyer takes the contract with the keys — the rent, the cheques, the deposit, the end date — and becomes the landlord on the same terms, which is why a home with a tenant in it is priced on the rent and why a buyer who means to live in it has a year to wait at the least. The question that follows is whether the seller's eviction notice passes to the buyer with the rest, and it is the one part of this page on which the law has moved. For years the centre required a new owner to serve their own twelve months, however far the seller's notice had run, which meant a tenant could be served eleven months of notice and then twelve more. Since early 2024 reported rulings at the centre and in the Dubai courts have treated a valid notice as attached to the property rather than to the person who served it, so that a buyer may rely on the seller's notice and the date it set. That is a reading by the courts, not a change to the statute, and a tenant can still challenge the notice on the usual grounds — service, date, reason — and can still ask whether the buyer's own intention is one the law allows. A buyer who wants certainty serves their own notice on the day of transfer; a tenant who receives a seller's notice asks for the deed and the notice together and counts the twelve months from the day it was served.

What a notice is worth — from the register

The reason a landlord serves notice to sell or to move in is often the one the law does not allow, arriving under the name of one it does: a sitting tenant pays a rent the index has held down, and a new tenant pays the market. The Ejari register keeps a renewal apart from a new lease, and this site reads it nightly. In the twelve months to 14 September 2026 it recorded 558,069 home tenancies on the contracts the site's reports count, 330,869 of them renewals — three in five — and 95% of them written for twelve months, which is why the notice is a full contract cycle long. On one-bedroom apartments alone, the most-let home in Dubai, it recorded 207,785 contracts: the median renewal at AED 53,360, the median new lease at AED 67,000. A landlord who recovers a one-bedroom flat and re-lets it takes, in the median, 26% more; a tenant served notice on one pays that 26% more somewhere else. Where the gap is widest is where the notice is most tempting and costs the tenant most, and where it is nil the notice has no rent behind it at all:

The shape is the city's own history. The gap is widest in the older districts east of the Creek and in the affordable communities of the south and west, where the market has moved furthest past the sitting tenant; it narrows through the mid-market and closes entirely in Downtown, Dubai Hills and Meydan, where the towers are new, the tenants are recent and the register cannot tell a renewal from a new lease. A landlord in Muhaisnah has a third of a rent to gain from vacant possession; a landlord in Downtown has nothing, and a notice there is either genuine or pointless. The register records the DLD area rather than the community name, so each row names the communities the area covers, and an area's mix of buildings can move its median a little either way. The community rent reports show the same two figures for every community, and by layout.

If you have been served

Read the notice for four things before anything else: that it came through a notary public or by registered post, and not by hand or by message; that it names one of the four reasons; that the date it gives is at least twelve months after the day it reached you; and that the person serving it is the owner on the title deed, or an agent with a power of attorney from them. A notice missing any of these has not started the clock, and you can say so — in writing, and by keeping a copy of both. Then carry on exactly as before. Pay the rent on the day, renew on the index when the year turns, keep the home as the contract requires, and keep every document: a tenant who stops paying under notice has handed the landlord the thirty-day ground, and the twelve months fall away. If the reason turns out not to have been real — the home is back on the rental portals within two years of a move-in notice, or was never listed for sale — the compensation claim is yours to bring at the centre, and dated screenshots of the listing are the evidence. And start looking early rather than late; the register above says what a new lease in your area costs against the renewal you are leaving, and the moving season runs from August to October.

If you want the home back

Choose the reason you can prove, because the centre will ask. For personal use, the title deed and evidence that you hold no other suitable home; for renovation, the municipality's report before the notice, not after; for demolition, the permits; for a sale, a listing that follows the notice and a sale that follows the listing. Then have the notice drafted — in Arabic, or bilingually, because the notary and the centre work in Arabic — with your name as on the deed, the tenant's, the property and its Ejari number, the reason, and a vacating date at least twelve months ahead, and serve it through a notary public or by registered post with proof of delivery. There is no official form; the Land Department does not issue eviction notices, the landlord does, and the department's part comes only if the tenant does not leave. Keep the notary's attestation or the post office receipt with the contract; it is the document the whole case turns on. Then keep the tenancy running properly through the twelve months, on the index, with the maintenance done, and calendar the date. A property manager does all of this for a landlord who would rather not, and a seller planning to hand a buyer vacant possession does it a year before the sale is meant to complete.

A tenant's own notice

The law is nearly silent on the tenant who wants to leave at the end of the term; it fixes a notice for the landlord's eviction and for any change of terms, not for a tenant's departure, so the contract's own clause governs. Most Dubai contracts ask for sixty or ninety days' written notice before the end date, and ninety is the safe figure whatever the clause says, since it is the law's own period for anything that changes at renewal. Give it in writing, keep proof, and on the last day hand over, settle the DEWA and have the Ejari cancelled. Leaving before the end date is a different matter and a heavier one: the law gives a tenant no right to break the term, so the early-exit clause on the additional-terms page decides it, conventionally a notice period and a penalty of two months' rent, and with no clause it is whatever the landlord will accept.