How a rent dispute is heard at Dubai's Rental Disputes Center

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Kooky

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When a landlord and a tenant in Dubai cannot agree, the disagreement does not go to the ordinary civil courts. It goes to a body created for that one purpose, the Rental Disputes Center, which has its head office in the Dubai Land Department and has its own conciliators, its own tribunals, its own appeal division and its own enforcement arm.

This guide follows a rent dispute from the first upload to the enforcement of a judgment. It rests on the text that created the Center, Decree No. (26) of 2013 as published on the Dubai Legislation Portal, and on the service pages and the question-and-answer page that the Center and the Dubai Land Department publish. It covers what the Center may and may not hear, the file a claimant has to assemble, remote filing, the fee and its limits, conciliation, the first-instance tribunal, the appeal and enforcement. It describes the general procedure; how it applies to one lease depends on that lease and on what the tribunal decides. The last section lists what the pages read do not say.

Decree No. (26) of 2013 on the Dubai Legislation Portal; Rental Disputes Center service pages and question-and-answer page, read on 10 October 2026.

The decree behind the Center

Decree No. (26) of 2013 Concerning the Rent Disputes Settlement Centre in the Emirate of Dubai was issued by the Ruler of Dubai on 18 September 2013. Under its Article 31 it came into force sixty days after its publication in the Official Gazette. The page on the Dubai Legislation Portal does not give the date of that publication, so the exact day is not stated here. The English text uses the name Rent Disputes Settlement Centre; the body's own pages call it the Rental Disputes Center, the name used in this guide.

Article 3 gives the purpose in one line: a specialised judicial system for rent disputes, with a quick and simple process. The Center did not start from nothing. Article 4 says its name replaces that of the Special Tribunal set up under Decree No. (2) of 1993, and Article 29 says the 2013 decree supersedes that earlier decree as well as Law No. (15) of 2009, which the preamble describes as dealing with rent disputes in free zones. Article 5 places the head office in the Land Department.

The decree defines its own terms. A rent dispute is a dispute between a landlord and a tenant over the leasing of immovable property. A Tribunal is one formed at the First Instance Division or at the Appellate Division of the Center.

Article 7 divides the Center into two sectors. The judicial sector has four units: the Mediation and Conciliation Directorate, the First Instance Division, the Appellate Division and the Judgment Enforcement Directorate. The administrative sector supports them. The Chairman, under Article 8, is appointed by a decree of the Ruler and must be a judge of at least the grade of an appellate court judge.

What the Center hears, and what it leaves out

Article 6 of the decree gives the Center exclusive jurisdiction over three things. The first is rent disputes between the landlords and tenants of property in the emirate, including property in free zones, together with the counterclaims that arise from them and applications for interim or urgent relief. The second is appeals against the decisions and judgments that the decree makes appealable. The third is the enforcement of its own decisions and judgments. The word exclusive matters: within that scope there is no choice of forum.

The same article then removes three kinds of dispute.

The first exclusion has to be read with the rule it qualifies. Free zones are inside the Center's jurisdiction as a starting point. A free zone falls outside only where it has a tribunal or special court of its own. The decree does not name the zones concerned, and none is named here.

The file: documents, notices and language

The list of documents is nearly the same at every stage, and the Center's page for conciliation and the Dubai Land Department's page for a first-instance case set it out. Five items form the core.

• A copy of the latest lease, with Ejari, meaning the registered tenancy contract. The Land Department's first-instance page asks for it legally translated.
• Identity. An individual supplies an Emirates ID. A company supplies its latest trade licence and the ID of its manager, whose name must match the licence.
• A bank letter or account statement showing the claimant's IBAN.
• For an eviction claim only, the notice that was served, with proof of what became of it: a notarised notice with the notification officer's report, or registered post with the acknowledgement of receipt.
• Supporting documents where they exist. The first-instance page names a valid management contract; a power of attorney is registered where a representative acts.

The first-instance page adds two cases. Where the landlord has died, a copy of the decree distributing the estate among the heirs is required. Where the claim concerns a renewal, the receipt for any offer and deposit is added: according to the Center's question-and-answer page, that is a procedure by which a tenant deposits rent with the Center's treasury and, once the judge accepts the request, is treated as having paid from that date.

The notice deserves attention because it is the one document that cannot be produced after the event. An eviction file without a served notice and proof of its outcome is incomplete on the page's own terms. The Center's question-and-answer page adds a timing rule: after a warning, one month must pass from the time it was received before a lawsuit is filed on it.

Two formal conditions apply to every paper. All documents must be in Arabic or legally translated into Arabic. And they are uploaded, not handed over: the pages state that no hard copies are accepted. No application form is required.

Filing from a distance

Article 25 of the decree required the Center's judicial and administrative work to be automated to simplify the procedure. The service pages show the result: every stage has an online channel, and hearings are held through what the pages call the tele-litigation or remote litigation system.

A first-time user registers on the Center's website and receives an activation link by email. Opening an account costs nothing, according to the question-and-answer page. To file, the user logs in, enters the details of the lease, enters the parties, states the requests, uploads the documents and saves the claim. The service pages add that the fee is paid after the claim has been verified electronically. The online payment methods on the question-and-answer page are the Noqodi wallet, a debit or credit card, or net banking.

Two automatic rules follow. The first is a deadline for paying: according to the question-and-answer page, the system cancels a lawsuit that remains unpaid for five days. The second concerns the first hearing: the system designates a committee and books the earliest available date, which is at least seven days after payment.

The Center sends a link to the session, and the same link appears in the case summary of the online file. Documents for a hearing are uploaded in the sessions section of the file before the hearing takes place. The window closes at a precise moment: the system blocks uploads once a case has been reserved for verdict, and during the judgment session.

There is a second channel for those who prefer a counter. The Land Department's pages list the Trustee Centers as a channel beside the website. The hearing is still attended through the remote system and the judgment is still received through the website. This channel adds a partner service fee of AED 130 plus VAT, and the service pages list cash among the payment methods.

The fee: a percentage with a floor and a ceiling

Article 23 of the decree leaves the fees to a resolution of the Chairman of the Executive Council. That resolution was not read for this guide; the amounts below are the ones the Center and the Land Department publish on their service pages. The schedule for filing a claim is the same on the conciliation page and on the first-instance page.

The percentage is taken on the annual rent, or on the value of the lease where its term is longer or shorter than a year. The pages do not show how that adjustment is made, so only one-year leases are used in the examples that follow. All of them are worked examples with illustrative figures.

The floor applies to any annual rent under about AED 14,286, the figure at which 3.5% equals AED 500. Take a claim for the renewal of a lease at an annual rent of AED 120,000. The basic fee is 3.5% of AED 120,000, which is AED 4,200. It lies between the two limits and is charged as computed. If the process service line and the knowledge and innovation fees all apply and no power of attorney is used, the online total is 4,200 plus 100 plus 10 plus 10, or AED 4,320.

A villa let at AED 650,000 a year gives AED 22,750, which is over the ceiling, so the basic fee is AED 20,000. The ceiling is reached at an annual rent of about AED 571,429.

Monetary claims follow the same rate with a lower ceiling. A claim for AED 30,000 of unpaid rent costs 3.5% of AED 30,000, or AED 1,050. A claim for AED 500,000 gives AED 17,500 and is capped at AED 15,000; that ceiling is reached at about AED 428,571.

Conciliation comes first

The decree puts an attempt at settlement before the tribunal. Under Article 10 the Mediation and Conciliation Directorate settles rent disputes amicably, with two exceptions: urgent or interim applications, and claims that were registered before the decree took effect. The Center's own page describes the Conciliation Department as the unit that reviews claims before they reach the first-instance committees.

The work is done by specialists under the supervision of a judge seconded for the purpose. Article 10 describes the method: the parties or their representatives are summoned, the documents and evidence are reviewed, and a settlement is proposed. An expert may be appointed, in which case the decision must state the scope of the task, the time allowed, the remuneration and which party pays it.

The decree sets a clock. The settlement period may not exceed fifteen days from the first appearance of the parties, and the supervising judge may extend it for the same period, once or more.

Two legal effects make the stage more than a formality. Under Article 10, limitation periods stop running from the date the dispute is registered with the Directorate, so time spent in conciliation is not lost to the claimant. And a settlement that is written down, signed by the parties and approved by the supervising judge has the force of a writ of execution.

Settlement also changes the cost. The decree provides that one-half of the registration fee is refunded when a settlement is reached, and the service page repeats it for the court fee paid on the basic claim. In the renewal example above, half of AED 4,200 is AED 2,100. The service ends with one of two documents, an agreement or a waiver of the claim, each signed and received through the website.

The first-instance tribunal

A claim that is not settled is decided by a tribunal of the First Instance Division. Article 13 fixes its composition: a chair and two members with experience in law and in real property. The chair must be a judge, although the chairman of the Judicial Council may appoint a qualified and experienced legal practitioner instead. The Chairman of the Center may assign tribunals to particular kinds of dispute, values of claim, areas or uses of property.

The decree gives the tribunal a time limit of its own. Under Article 16 a claim must be decided within thirty days of being referred, a period that may be extended for the same length under rules set by the chairman of the Judicial Council. The Land Department's service page publishes a shorter service standard: ten minutes to complete the registration of a first-instance case and eight business days for the completion of the service, whose output is the first-instance judgment. The two figures are not the same kind of statement. One is a legal limit, the other a published service time; the page does not say from which event its eight business days are counted.

Appeal: the AED 100,000 line and the deposit

Not every first-instance judgment can be appealed. Article 17 of the decree draws the line by value: judgments go to the Appellate Division, except those on rent claims valued below AED 100,000, which are final. The Center's question-and-answer page states the same rule from the other side: an appeal based solely on a financial claim requires a claimed amount of AED 100,000 or more.

Below that line the decree still opens the door in six cases:

1. the judgment orders an eviction;
2. the judgment breaches the rules of jurisdiction;
3. the judgment grants something that was not requested, grants more than was requested, or leaves a request unanswered;
4. a party was not duly represented, or the summons was not validly served;
5. the judgment rests on documents or testimony later declared false by a court;
6. a party concealed evidence or documents that would have changed the outcome.

The first case is the one with the widest reach. An eviction judgment can be appealed whatever the rent, a point the question-and-answer page repeats for the defendant in an eviction case. As an illustration, a tenant ordered to leave a studio let at AED 40,000 a year can appeal; a landlord who loses a claim for AED 40,000 of arrears, with no eviction and none of the other five cases, cannot.

The period is short. Article 18 gives fifteen days. The two sources do not describe the starting point in the same words. In the English text of the decree as read for this guide, the period runs from the day after the hearing, and, where the losing party attended no hearing and filed no defence, from the day the judgment is served. The Center's appeal page counts 15 days from the day after the judgment is issued, for a judgment given in the presence of the parties, or from notification of a judgment given in their absence. Both are reported as they stand; the decree's wording was read in summary and is not quoted here.

An appeal on a money judgment has a price beyond the fees. Article 18 requires the judgment debtor to deposit half of the amount of the judgment with the Center while the appeal is pending, and allows the Chairman to waive the deposit in whole or in part. The appeal page calls this the appeal security and describes it as refundable. As a worked example, a tenant ordered to pay AED 150,000 who appeals would deposit AED 75,000. The page does not say when or on what conditions the security is returned.

The appeal page lists the papers as an appeal plaint and supporting documents, and the fixed lines as AED 100 for process service, AED 25 for a power of attorney where one is used, and AED 10 each for the knowledge and innovation fees. Registration is given as one business day.

The appeal is heard by a tribunal of two judges and one person experienced in real property, chaired by a judge, under Article 14. Its judgment is final. The decree provides no further appeal.

From judgment to enforcement

A judgment in a rent case is enforced by the body that gave it. Article 21 of the decree gives the enforcement of final judgments of both divisions to the Judgment Enforcement Directorate, and allows the Chairman to ask the Execution Department of Dubai Courts for assistance.

Enforcement cannot be requested on the day of the judgment. According to the question-and-answer page, it opens after 15 days from the day following a judgment given in the presence of the parties, or 15 days after notification of a judgment given in their absence. That period has the same length as the appeal period.

The cost of enforcement depends on what is being enforced. The question-and-answer page states that there is no fee for executing financial claims. For an eviction, the fee is 1% of the annual value of the tenancy contract, with a maximum of AED 5,000. In the renewal example, 1% of AED 120,000 is AED 1,200. For the villa at AED 650,000 the percentage gives AED 6,500 and the cap brings it to AED 5,000; the cap is reached at an annual rent of AED 500,000.

Once the file is open, further steps are taken by electronic requests inside it, at AED 20 for each request. The question-and-answer page says these can start seven days after the defendant has been served with the executive writ notice, while the Land Department's execution page speaks of applications submitted 15 days after notice. The two pages give different periods, seven days and 15 days, and neither explains the other; both are reported here as they stand.

What the pages read do not say

Several points a party would want settled are not answered by the sources read for this guide.

The portal page for Decree No. (26) of 2013 shows no note of amendments and no Gazette date. Whether the text has been amended since 2013 was not established from it. The Executive Council resolution that sets the fees was not read; the amounts given are those on the service pages.

The conciliation service page does not say what happens when no settlement is reached. This guide relies on the Center's own description of conciliation as a review before the first-instance committees, and on the structure of the decree.

The Center's page on its virtual court could not be opened, so remote hearings are described only from the service pages. The decree does not name the free zones that have their own tribunals. The pages do not describe how an eviction is physically carried out, when the appeal security is refunded, or how the 3.5% is adjusted for a lease that is not for one year. The Land Department's first-instance page also shows a power of attorney line of AED 500 beside the AED 25 line that the Center's pages give, without explaining it. The pages publish no case numbers and no measured times to judgment.

A rent case in Dubai stays under one roof from start to finish: the body that tries to settle it also judges it, hears the appeal and enforces the result.

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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