Dubai rent settlements reach 2,350 in nine months, worth AED 401 million

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Kooky

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Dubai's Rental Disputes Center concluded 2,350 amicable settlements between January and the end of September 2026, with a combined value of AED 401 million, Khaleej Times reported on Saturday 10 October 2026. Each of those cases took six days on average to resolve, according to the figures the newspaper attributes to the Center.

The numbers describe one part of the Center's work: the disputes between landlords and tenants that end in an agreement instead of a judgment. They say nothing yet about the cases that went on to a tribunal, and the report gives no total for the claims filed over the same nine months. This article sets out what was announced, what the six-day figure does and does not cover, how the result sits beside the last quarterly figures the Center published itself, and what remains unknown.

Rental Disputes Center figures as reported by Khaleej Times, 10 October 2026.

What the Center reported

According to Khaleej Times, the 2,350 cases were handled by the Center's Conciliation and Settlement Department. The period runs from January to the end of September 2026, so the count covers three full quarters.

The newspaper quotes the Center's chairman, Judge Abdulqader Mousa Mohammed. In its account, he said the performance of the settlement mechanism over the first nine months of the year shows that rent disputes can be brought to a quick and effective conclusion. He named three outcomes of the system: speed, the quality of the procedures and the protection of the parties' rights. He tied all three to the specialised expertise the Center relies on.

The report carries several statements from the Center itself. Settlement, it said, lets tenants and landlords agree flexible solutions without formal litigation, and reduces the social and economic effect of disputes that run for a long time. The Center added that this approach matters more as demand grows in Dubai's rental market for flexible legal solutions. It said it will keep improving its procedures, ensure fair access to justice and promote amicable settlement.

No new fee, no change of rule and no effective date is announced in the report. It is a statement of results.

A simple division gives the scale. AED 401 million spread over 2,350 cases is about AED 170,600 for each settlement. That is an arithmetic average worked out for this article from the two published totals, not a figure from the Center, and the report does not say how the value of a case is measured.

What the six-day average measures

The six-day figure is easy to misread, and Khaleej Times is careful about it. The average covers only the cases that were settled amicably through the Center during the nine months. It is not the length of every rent dispute filed in Dubai.

Two things follow from that scope. The first is that an average says little about any single case: some settlements will have closed faster and some slower, and the report gives no range. The second is that a dispute in which the parties do not agree leaves the average altogether. It continues on what the newspaper describes as a separate track, towards a final ruling, and the time that track takes is not part of the announcement.

The report does not say from which event the six days are counted, so the figure is best read as an indication of pace, not as a deadline.

The six-day average is not new either. The Center published the same figure for the second quarter of 2025, in a release dated 28 August 2025. What the latest report adds is that the average has held over a much larger number of cases.

The nine months beside last year's second quarter

The Center's last detailed release that this article could read is the one for April to June 2025. It counted 443 reconciliation agreements in the quarter, worth AED 190.7 million, with the same six-day average. It also gave a monthly breakdown, which the nine-month report does not.

The two periods are not the same length and do not cover the same months, so they cannot be compared as one year against the next. No figure for January to September 2025 was found, and the Khaleej Times report gives no year-on-year change. With that limit stated, the monthly pace can still be read. The 2,350 settlements of 2026 come to about 261 a month over nine months. The 443 of the second quarter of 2025 come to about 148 a month over three.

Value moves the other way. AED 401 million over nine months is about AED 44.6 million a month, against about AED 63.6 million a month in the 2025 quarter. The 2025 breakdown shows why monthly values are a fragile guide: June 2025 alone, with 108 settlements, accounted for AED 129.334 million, a value the Center called a record, while May 2025 had the most settlements of the quarter, 191, and the lowest value. A small number of large leases can move the total far more than the count of cases does.

One caution applies to the 2025 release itself. Its three monthly counts add up to the 443 it states for the quarter. Its three monthly values add up to about AED 197.984 million, which is AED 7.284 million more than the AED 190.7 million given as the quarterly total. The release does not explain the gap, and Gulf News, which reported the same figures on 28 August 2025, did not either. Both numbers are reported here as published.

How a settlement becomes enforceable

A settlement at the Center is not an informal handshake. As Khaleej Times describes it, the process gives the parties a structured route to an agreement while their rights remain protected, and, if tenant and landlord agree, the supervising judge approves the settlement. That approval gives the agreement the force of an enforceable legal instrument.

Gulf News described the service in more detail in an article last updated on 28 January 2026, when the Center presented what the newspaper called an enhanced conciliation and amicable settlement service. Settlements are reached under the supervision of a conciliator and a judge, the newspaper reported, and the resulting agreement is binding and enforceable at the Center. The session is attended through the Center's remote hearing system, and the service ends with one of two documents: a conciliation agreement, or a waiver of the claim.

In the same article, Mohammed Hamad Al Mahri, whom Gulf News named as director of the Central Support Department and acting director of the Conciliation and Amicable Settlement Department, presented settlement as the best way to resolve rent disputes, one that balances the rights of all parties and supports the stability of Dubai's rental market.

There is also a financial reason to settle, according to that report: half of the court fee is refunded when a case is resolved through conciliation. Gulf News gave the basic fee as 3.5 per cent of the annual rent, between AED 500 and AED 20,000. As a worked example with illustrative figures, a claim on a lease at AED 100,000 a year would carry a basic fee of AED 3,500, and a settlement would return AED 1,750 of it.

What it means for landlords, tenants and brokers

For a landlord or a tenant, the practical message of the figures is narrow but useful. Where both sides are willing to agree, the Center's own numbers show a dispute closed in days, with a document a judge has approved. A tenant disputing a claim for arrears and a landlord seeking payment both leave with the same enforceable paper.

The figures do not promise that outcome. Settlement needs the agreement of both parties, and the report does not say what share of the disputes that entered conciliation ended in one. A party who expects the other side to refuse cannot plan on six days.

For brokers and property managers, who are often the first people a landlord or tenant turns to when a tenancy goes wrong, the report gives a current and sourced reference point for a common question: how long a dispute takes. The careful answer, on these figures, is that the settled ones took six days on average in the first nine months of 2026, and that nothing published in the report covers the rest. How a given case would run depends on the lease, the claim and the two parties.

The size of the sums is worth noting too. An average of about AED 170,600 a case, across 2,350 cases, suggests that settlement is not reserved for small claims, though without a breakdown that reading stays an inference from two totals.

What the report does not say

Several questions stay open on 10 October 2026.

The total number of rent cases filed at the Center between January and September 2026 is not given, so the 2,350 settlements cannot be expressed as a share of all disputes. No comparable figure for the same nine months of 2025 was published in the report. There is no breakdown by month, by type of dispute or between residential and commercial leases, and so no way to tell whether the value came mostly from homes or from shops, offices and warehouses.

The Center's own release for the nine months was not found for this article. The figures are therefore given as Khaleej Times reported them, and the newspaper attributes them to the Center without naming a document. The Center said it will go on improving its procedures; it announced no date and no specific measure.

A six-day average tells landlords and tenants how fast an agreed ending can be. It does not tell them how often the two sides agree.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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