Rental Dispute Center Dubai: Filing, Official Fees and RERA Rules

The Rental Dispute Center (RDC) is Dubai’s specialised tenancy court — the judicial arm of the Dubai Land Department, created by Decree 26 of 2013 to hear every landlord-tenant dispute in the emirate, from an unreturned deposit on a studio to the eviction of a logistics tenant from a warehouse. Filing runs through the RDC’s electronic channels with the tenancy contract and Ejari certificate, the published fee is 3.5% of the annual rent subject to caps that differ by claim type, and most cases pass through mediation before a tribunal ever rules.

Around it sits RERA — the Real Estate Regulatory Agency — whose rental index and rent-cap slabs define what increases are lawful in the first place. This guide, updated July 2026, covers the process, the official costs, the RERA rules that decide most disputes before they start, and the angle almost no one writes about: what tenancy risk means for a business’s finances.

RDC and RERA: two bodies, one system

The names get used interchangeably and shouldn’t be. RERA, established in 2007, is the regulator — it registers tenancy contracts through Ejari, publishes the rental index that benchmarks fair rents, licenses brokers and management companies, and writes the rules of the market. The RDC, established in 2013, is the judge — when a dispute crystallises, it is the forum that hears it, through a settlement stage, first-instance tribunals and an appeals division for qualifying cases. DIFC, which runs its own courts, sits outside; effectively everywhere else in Dubai, including the major free zone communities, tenancy disputes land at the RDC.

The practical consequence of the split: your rights are mostly determined by RERA-side instruments — the registered contract, the index, the notice rules — and the RDC largely enforces the paperwork position you built (or failed to build) during the tenancy. Cases are won in the filing cabinet.

What Decree 26 of 2013 actually gives the Centre

The founding instrument is short and worth reading before you rely on anything written about it. Article 3 states the purpose plainly: to establish “a specialised judicial system to hear Rent Disputes, and to develop the procedure for determination of such disputes through an expeditious and simple process”. Article 4 renamed the old Special Tribunal to Determine Disputes between Landlords and Tenants, created under Decree 2 of 1993, as the Rent Disputes Settlement Centre.

Article 6(a) then grants exclusive jurisdiction over three things: determining all rent disputes between landlords and tenants of real property “situated in the Emirate or in free zones”, including counterclaims and applications for interim or urgent relief; determining appeals; and enforcing the Centre’s own judgments. That last limb matters more than it sounds — the Centre does not hand you a judgment and send you to another court to collect it.

Article 6(b) is the carve-out, and it is narrower than the internet believes:

Excluded under Article 6(b)	What it covers in practice	Where it goes instead
Disputes arising within free zones that have their own tribunals or special courts	The Dubai International Financial Centre is the practical example	The zone’s own judicial body
Disputes arising from a lease finance contract	Ijara and finance-lease structures dressed as tenancies	General civil jurisdiction
Disputes from long-term lease contracts covered by Law 7 of 2006	Registered long leases in the property register	Dubai’s real estate court track

Source: Decree No. 26 of 2013, Articles 3, 4 and 6, official English text published by the Dubai Land Department (dubailand.gov.ae, checked August 2026).

Note the shape of that list. Property inside a free zone that has no tribunal of its own is squarely inside the RDC’s jurisdiction — the common belief that “free zone means not RDC” is wrong, and the exclusion turns on whether the zone has its own court, not on the address.

The four rooms inside the Centre

Article 7 splits the Centre into a judicial sector and an administrative sector, and the judicial sector into four units. Knowing which room your case is in tells you what happens next.

Unit (Article 7(b))	Function	What a party should expect
Mediation and Conciliation Directorate	Amicable settlement before adjudication	A settlement here is signed by the parties and approved by the supervising judge, and under Article 10(g) it carries the force of a writ of execution
First Instance Division	Tribunals hearing the dispute at first instance	Tribunals are formed and chaired by appointment under Article 11
Appellate Division	Appeals from decisions and judgments that are appealable	Not every first-instance decision is appealable — the threshold sits in the Decree and its implementing resolutions
Judgment Enforcement Directorate	Execution of the Centre’s judgments	Enforcement stays inside the Centre rather than moving to a separate execution court

Source: Decree No. 26 of 2013, Articles 7, 10 and 11 (Dubai Land Department, dubailand.gov.ae, checked August 2026).

Two features of the mediation stage are worth planning around. Article 10(h) lets the Directorate bring in experts and specialists, with the decision specifying the expert’s scope, deadline, remuneration and which party pays it. And Article 10(i) charges a registration fee for a dispute submitted to mediation at the same rate as a claim — but refunds one-half of that fee if the parties reach amicable settlement. Settling early is not just faster; it is cheaper by statute.

Filing a case: documents, fee, timeline

Documents. The core pack is stable across case types: tenancy contract, Ejari certificate, Emirates ID (or trade licence for a company party), the landlord’s title deed where relevant, all notices and correspondence exchanged, and the money trail — cheques, receipts, bank statements. Evidence in other languages needs legal Arabic translation.

Fee. The Dubai Land Department’s published Know Your Rights guide for real estate investors prices registration at 3.5% of the annual rent, with the cap set by what you are actually claiming:

Claim type	Fee	Cap
Financial claim (unpaid rent, deposits, damages)	3.5% of annual rent	AED 15,000
Eviction or lease-renewal claim	3.5% of annual rent	AED 20,000
Hybrid claim combining a financial and an eviction claim	3.5% of annual rent	AED 35,000
Settled at the Mediation and Conciliation Directorate	—	One-half of the registration fee refunded, Article 10(i)
For contrast: Dubai Real Estate Court (non-rental property disputes)	Fixed range	AED 20,000 to AED 40,000

Source: Know Your Rights… For Real Estate Investors in Dubai, published by Dubai Land Department (dubailand.gov.ae, retrieved 4 August 2026); Decree 26 of 2013, Article 10(i). Fee schedules are set by Executive Council resolution under Article 23 and can be revised — confirm the current figure at filing.

That cap structure changes how you frame a claim. A landlord chasing eight months of arrears and possession is filing a hybrid claim priced against the AED 35,000 ceiling; the same landlord filing only for arrears sits under AED 15,000. It is not a reason to under-claim, but it is a reason to know the number before you draft.

3.5%

Published RDC registration fee as a share of annual rent — capped at AED 15,000, AED 20,000 or AED 35,000 by claim type (Dubai Land Department, checked August 2026)

Process. Cases file electronically or at RDC service points, then route through the settlement and mediation stage. Unsettled cases proceed to a first-instance tribunal; Article 3 of the Decree commits the Centre to “an expeditious and simple process”, and Article 25 requires the judicial and administrative sectors to be automated for the same reason. Higher-value cases can continue to the Appellate Division. Judgments are enforced by the Centre’s own Judgment Enforcement Directorate — including against security cheques — which is why the documentation trail matters more than courtroom theatre.

The evidence pack, mapped to what the law asks

Article 4(1) of Law 26 of 2007, as amended by Law 33 of 2008, tells you what a tenancy contract must contain, and by extension what a tribunal expects to see: a description of the leased property “in a manner allowing no room for uncertainty”, the purpose of the tenancy, the term, the rent and payment method, and the name of the owner where the landlord is not the owner. A contract missing any of those is not automatically void, but every gap becomes an argument.

Document	Why the tribunal wants it	Statutory hook
Tenancy contract	Establishes the terms in dispute	Law 26/2007 Article 4(1), as amended
Ejari registration	Contracts and amendments “will be registered with RERA”	Law 26/2007 Article 4(2), as amended
Title deed	Proves the landlord’s standing to claim	Ownership evidence for Article 25(2) grounds
Emirates ID or trade licence	Identifies the party; a company files on its licence	Party capacity
Notices served, with proof of channel	Most eviction claims turn on this	Law 26/2007 Article 2 definition of “Notice”
Cheques, receipts, bank statements	The money trail behind arrears or refund claims	Evidence of payment or non-payment
Technical report from Dubai Municipality	Required for condemnation and comprehensive-maintenance grounds	Article 25(1)(f) and 25(2)(b)
Legal Arabic translation of foreign-language evidence	Proceedings run in Arabic	Court practice

Article 3 of the amended law also carries a quiet exclusion worth knowing: the law applies to land and real property leased in the Emirate excluding property provided free of rent by a person or company to accommodate their employees. Staff accommodation given rent-free is not a tenancy for these purposes, and a dispute over it is not a rent dispute.

The RERA rules that decide disputes in advance

Most rent fights are arithmetic, and the arithmetic is published. Under Decree 43 of 2013, a landlord may only increase rent to the extent the current rent lags the RERA index for comparable properties: within 10% below index, no increase; 11–20% below, up to 5%; 21–30% below, up to 10%; 31–40% below, up to 15%; more than 40% below, up to 20%. The index itself has sharpened with the building-rated Smart Rental Index, and the DLD’s calculator applies it instantly to any registered property. The slabs, the index and the calculator are all published through the Dubai Land Department’s official channels (dubailand.gov.ae, accessed July 2026).

Around the slabs sit the notice rules that generate half the RDC’s docket. A rent amendment requires 90 days’ written notice before renewal. Eviction on expiry grounds — sale, the landlord’s personal use, demolition or major renovation — requires twelve months’ notice served through the notary public or by registered mail. The pattern in the case law is monotonous: notices served late, informally, or through the wrong channel fail, whatever the underlying merits. If one paragraph of this article saves a reader money, it is this one — serve notices in the legal form, and diarise the windows.

Running the Decree 43 calculation, slab by slab

Decree 43 of 2013 was issued on 18 December 2013 and its Article 1 sets the maximum increase on renewal against how far the current rent sits below the average market rental rate. Article 3 defines that average by reference to the “Rent Index of the Emirate of Dubai” approved by RERA — so the index is not guidance, it is the statutory input.

Current rent vs average market rental rate	Maximum increase permitted on renewal
Less than 10% below the average	No increase
11% to 20% below the average	5% of the rent value
21% to 30% below the average	10% of the rent value
31% to 40% below the average	15% of the rent value
More than 40% below the average	20% of the rent value

Source: Decree No. 43 of 2013, Article 1, official English text published by the Dubai Land Department (dubailand.gov.ae, checked August 2026).

Worked through on a warehouse tenancy, the arithmetic is unforgiving in the tenant’s favour more often than landlords expect:

Step	Figure	Note
Current annual rent	AED 180,000	As stated in the registered contract
RERA index average for comparable units	AED 220,000	Taken from the official calculator, not from an agent
Gap below the index	AED 40,000, or 18.2%	40,000 ÷ 220,000
Applicable Decree 43 band	11%–20% below	Article 1(b)
Maximum lawful increase	5% of AED 180,000 = AED 9,000	New rent AED 189,000
Landlord’s proposed increase	AED 30,000	Unlawful by AED 21,000 on these figures

Two things that trip people up. First, the percentage applies to the rent value, not to the gap — 5% of what you pay now, not 5% of the shortfall. Second, Article 2 of the Decree applies it to “all landlords of the public and private authorities in the Emirate of Dubai, including the special development areas and the free zones, including Dubai International Financial Center”. The rent-cap decree reaches into the DIFC even though the RDC’s jurisdiction does not — the cap and the forum are separate questions.

Notices: the exact form the law requires

More eviction claims fail on the notice than on the merits, and the reason is that “Notice” is a defined term. Article 2 of Law 26 of 2007, as amended by Law 33 of 2008, defines it as “a written notification sent by either party to the Lease Contract to the other through the Notary Public, or delivered by registered post, by hand, or by any other technological means approved by law.”

Purpose of notice	Period required	Channel required	Article
Amending any term of the tenancy, including rent, on renewal	No less than 90 days before expiry, unless the parties agreed otherwise	Per the Article 2 definition	Article 14
Demanding payment before eviction for arrears	Eviction available 30 days after notice to pay, unless otherwise agreed	Through a Notary Public or registered post	Article 25(1)
Requiring performance of any other obligation before eviction	30 days from service	Through a Notary Public or registered post	Article 25(1)(g)
Eviction at expiry on any of the four permitted grounds	Twelve months before the date set for eviction	Through a Notary Public or registered post	Article 25(2)
Tenant exercising right of first refusal after reconstruction	Within 30 days of being notified	—	Article 29(2)

Source: Law No. 26 of 2007 as amended by Law No. 33 of 2008, official English text published by the Dubai Land Department (dubailand.gov.ae, checked August 2026).

Read the twelve-month rule carefully: the notice runs to “the date set for eviction”, not to the contract expiry date, and it must go through a notary or registered post. A message sent by email or handed over at the office may satisfy the general Article 2 definition for an ordinary notice, but Article 25 narrows the channel for eviction to two options only. That is the single most consequential sentence in Dubai tenancy law for a business tenant.

Eviction during the term: the Article 25(1) grounds

A landlord cannot end a tenancy early for convenience. Article 25(1) lists the closed set of grounds, and each carries its own evidential burden:

Ground	Trigger	Evidence the tribunal expects
Non-payment of rent	Failure to pay within 30 days of a notice to pay, unless otherwise agreed	The notice, its channel, and the payment record
Unauthorised sub-letting	Sub-let without the landlord’s written approval; eviction applies to tenant and sub-tenant, though the sub-tenant keeps a compensation claim against the tenant	The sub-lease and absence of written consent
Illegal or immoral use	Use that breaches public order or morals	Authority findings or documented complaints
Commercial premises left empty	Vacant without valid reason for 30 consecutive days, or 90 non-consecutive days in the same year, unless agreed otherwise	Access logs, utility consumption, inspection records
Unsafe alteration or wilful damage	Changes that cannot be reversed, or damage through wilful act or gross negligence	Technical evidence of the alteration or damage
Use contrary to purpose or planning rules	Property used for a purpose other than the leased purpose, or in breach of planning, construction and land-use regulations	The contract’s stated purpose against actual use
Condemnation	Property condemned	Technical report issued by or attested to by Dubai Municipality
Government-required demolition or reconstruction	Urban development requirements imposed by competent government entities	The government requirement
Breach of any other legal or contractual obligation	Failure to remedy within 30 days of notice	The notice and the unremedied breach

Source: Law No. 26 of 2007 as amended by Law No. 33 of 2008, Article 25(1) (Dubai Land Department, dubailand.gov.ae, checked August 2026).

The fourth row is a commercial-tenancy trap almost nobody prices. A retailer that closes a unit for a seasonal refit, or a trading company that mothballs a warehouse between contracts, can hand its landlord a statutory eviction ground by doing nothing at all for thirty consecutive days. If a business tenancy will sit idle, get the landlord’s written agreement first — Article 25(1) expressly allows the parties to agree otherwise.

Eviction at expiry: four grounds and what happens afterwards

Article 25(2) is a different animal. At expiry the landlord may seek eviction only where the owner wants to demolish and reconstruct or add construction preventing the tenant’s use (with permits obtained); where the property needs restoration or comprehensive maintenance that cannot be done with the tenant in place, verified by a technical report issued by or attested to by Dubai Municipality; where the owner wants the property for personal use or for a first-degree relative, provided the owner proves he does not own another property appropriate for the purpose; or where the owner wishes to sell.

The law then polices the honesty of those grounds after the tenant has gone:

Protection	What it does	Article
Re-letting bar after personal-use eviction	Landlord may not rent to a third party for at least two years (residential) or three years (non-residential) from taking possession, unless the tribunal sets a shorter period	Article 26
Compensation for breach of the bar	Tenant may ask the tribunal to award fair compensation	Article 26
Right of first refusal after reconstruction	Tenant has first refusal to re-rent after demolition and reconstruction, or renovation and refurbishment, with rent set under Article 9 criteria	Article 29(1)
Deadline to exercise it	Within 30 days of the landlord’s notification	Article 29(2)
No rent holiday during proceedings	Filing an eviction claim does not exempt the tenant from paying rent for the whole period	Law 26/2007 as amended

Source: Law No. 26 of 2007 as amended by Law No. 33 of 2008, Articles 25(2), 26 and 29 (Dubai Land Department, dubailand.gov.ae, checked August 2026).

The three-year figure in Article 26 is specific to non-residential property and it is the most useful number a commercial tenant can know. A landlord who evicts a business on the personal-use ground and re-lets the unit fourteen months later has exposed itself to a compensation claim — and the evidence is a public listing.

The business tenancy angle: rent as a compliance cost

Commercial premises live under the same law and the same forum, but the risk profile is different in kind. For an SME, three exposures dominate:

Licensing dependency. Your trade licence address and Ejari must align, and licence renewal stalls without a valid registered lease. A tenancy dispute that touches the premises therefore reaches into DED and free zone compliance — the same web of renewals mapped in our Dubai trade licence guide.

Cheque exposure. Rent cheques are real liabilities with dates on them. A bounced rent cheque puts a business on the back foot legally and reputationally, and it is almost always a cash-flow forecasting failure rather than a solvency one — the discipline covered in our cash flow forecasting guide.

Balance-sheet treatment. Leases carry accounting consequences — rent accruals, provisions for disputed amounts, security deposits carried as assets, and disclosure where litigation is live. A dispute your lawyer knows about and your accountant doesn’t produces financial statements that mislead exactly when banks and auditors look hardest. Keeping the lease file and the books in the same conversation is bread-and-butter work for our accounting and bookkeeping practice, and the sector-specific mechanics run through our real estate accounting guide.

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Read Article 25 and you notice how much of it is about paperwork: notices, technical reports, written consents, proof of ownership. The RDC rewards filing cabinets, not grievances.

The lease clauses a business should negotiate before it needs them

Dubai’s tenancy law leaves several rules expressly subject to the parties’ agreement, which means they are negotiable at signing and immovable afterwards. A commercial tenant that reads Article 25 before signing gets three free options:

Clause	What the law says by default	What to negotiate
Vacancy	Commercial premises empty 30 consecutive or 90 non-consecutive days in a year is an eviction ground, “unless agreed otherwise by both parties”	An express carve-out for refits, seasonal closure and fit-out periods
Arrears cure period	Eviction available 30 days after a notice to pay, “unless otherwise agreed by the parties”	A longer cure period, and a requirement that notice go to a named finance contact
Notice to amend terms	90 days before expiry, “unless otherwise agreed by the parties”	A longer window, so a rent proposal cannot land on top of your budget cycle
Rent review mechanism	Article 13 lets either party seek review; Article 9 criteria apply if they disagree	Agree the index reference and the review date in the contract
Unfinished premises	Article 15 allows leasing unfinished property if the tenant completes it, with cost allocation in the contract	Nail the fit-out cost split and what happens to it at exit

Source: Law No. 26 of 2007 as amended by Law No. 33 of 2008, Articles 9, 13, 14, 15 and 25 (Dubai Land Department, dubailand.gov.ae, checked August 2026).

Article 9 is the one to keep in your back pocket. If the parties never specified the rent, or a tribunal has to set it, the tribunal determines the rent of similar property “taking into account the criteria determining the percentage of Rent increase set by RERA, the overall economic situation in the Emirate, the condition of the Real Property, and the average Rent of similar Real Property in similar Real Property markets within the same area”. That is a valuation exercise with named inputs — which is exactly the kind of argument a business with maintenance records, photographs and comparable listings can win.

Ejari is a statutory duty, not an administrative nicety

Businesses treat Ejari as a licensing errand. The law treats it as an obligation: Article 4(2) of Law 26 of 2007, as amended by Law 33 of 2008, states that all tenancy contracts and any amendments to them “will be registered with RERA”. The Dubai Land Department’s own tenancy guide describes Ejari as the programme developed by RERA for recording tenancy contracts for all types of property in Dubai, pursuant to that law, and states that registration is mandatory.

That single provision is why an unregistered lease creates compound exposure for a UAE company rather than a single problem:

Consequence	Mechanism
Filing friction at the RDC	The registered contract is the primary evidence of the terms a tribunal is being asked to enforce
Trade licence renewal	A Dubai mainland licence is tied to premises; renewal expects a valid registered tenancy at the licensed address
Utility and telecom connections	Providers in Dubai key activation to the registered tenancy
Visa and establishment file	Premises evidence flows into the company’s establishment record
Amendments left unregistered	Article 4(2) covers amendments too, so a side letter varying the rent is registrable in its own right

Source: Law No. 26 of 2007 as amended by Law No. 33 of 2008, Article 4; Tenancy Guide, published by the Dubai Land Department (dubailand.gov.ae, checked August 2026).

The last row catches more businesses than the first four combined. A company negotiates a rent reduction mid-term, shakes hands, keeps paying the lower figure — and has an unregistered amendment sitting against a registered contract that says something else. Two years later the landlord claims the difference. Register the amendment when you agree it, and the argument never happens.

A tenancy hygiene checklist for SMEs

1. Register Ejari at signing, not at licence-renewal panic. No Ejari, no case, no renewal.
2. Calendar the notice windows — 90 days before renewal for terms changes, and watch for the landlord’s twelve-month notices in the legal channels.
3. Run the RERA calculator annually so a proposed increase can be checked against the slabs in minutes.
4. Keep the money trail clean — receipts for every payment, copies of every cheque, and reconciliations that would read well in front of a tribunal.
5. Serve your own notices formally — notary or registered mail for anything consequential, however friendly the relationship.
6. Tell your accountant about disputes early so provisions and disclosures stay honest.
7. Register every amendment, not just the original contract — Article 4(2) covers both, and an unregistered variation is the argument you will lose in Dubai two years from now.
8. Check the eviction ground against Article 25 before you accept a notice at face value; a personal-use ground on commercial premises in the UAE carries a three-year re-letting bar under Article 26, and a landlord who breaches it owes compensation.

After judgment: enforcement, cheques and the accounting entry

Winning is a step, not the end. Because Article 6(a)(3) of Decree 26 of 2013 keeps enforcement inside the Centre, a judgment goes to the Judgment Enforcement Directorate rather than to a separate execution court in Dubai — which shortens the tail, but does not remove the need to know where the money is. A settlement reached at mediation reaches the same place faster: under Article 10(g) an approved settlement agreement carries the force of a writ of execution in its own right.

For a UAE business, the part that outlives the dispute is the accounting. A live tenancy dispute touches at least four lines, and an auditor who finds out about it late will ask why:

Item	Treatment while the dispute is live	Illustrative AED figure
Disputed rent claimed by the landlord	Provision or contingent liability, depending on how probable the outflow is	120,000 claimed arrears
Security deposit held by the landlord	Carried as a receivable, tested for recoverability	25,000
Fit-out on leased premises	Leasehold improvement, amortised over the shorter of useful life and lease term — the term changes if eviction succeeds	180,000
RDC registration fee and legal costs	Expensed as incurred; recoverable amounts only recognised when awarded	3.5% of annual rent, capped by claim type
Post-dated rent cheques already issued	Still a liability with a date on it, whatever the dispute says	Per the cheque schedule

Illustrative figures only — they are there to show the shape of the entries, not to describe any real tenancy. The lease term assumption is the one that quietly matters most: a Dubai business amortising a AED 180,000 fit-out over a five-year term it may lose in twelve months is carrying an asset the eviction claim has already impaired.

Where Velmont Crest fits

Tenancy risk for a business is one part legal and three parts administrative — registrations current, dates calendared, payments reconciled, exposures provisioned. That second part is exactly the machinery we run for SME clients: the compliance calendar that tracks lease renewals alongside VAT and licence dates, bookkeeping that keeps the rent trail evidence-grade, and management accounts where a brewing premises problem shows up as a number rather than a surprise. Businesses that operate this way rarely see the inside of the RDC — and when they do, they arrive with the winning filing cabinet. If your lease dates currently live in the office manager’s memory, that is the gap worth closing this quarter.