A 50% rent increase? Record property demand in Dubai is creating a nightmare for some residents

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Demand for property in the United Arab Emirates’ glitzy commercial capital of Dubai hit a record high for the first two months of 2023, real estate services firm CBRE revealed in a report published Thursday.

In February alone, Dubai’s residential market saw 8,515 transactions — a whopping 43.9% increase from the previous year. January and February together clocked a total of 17,741 residential transactions.

Beyond the property market, Dubai’s economic boom is evident in everyday life.

Every week, a new high-end restaurant seems to appear in the desert emirate, which morphed from a small fishing village to a bustling, hyper-modern metropolis within just the last few decades. Downtown bars are crowded most evenings. The city’s Roads and Traffic Authority recently reported record road traffic and public transport use in the last year. Residents frequently complain that ordering a taxi on any evening of the week — even a Monday night — takes longer than ever.

But while some Dubai residents — roughly 90% of whom are expats — find the struggle to book a ride or a restaurant table frustrating, it’s the sharp and often extreme increase in rents that are hitting many of them the hardest.

“A 60% increase,” one Dubai-based consultant told CNBC when asked about how much their rent had increased year-on-year. The consultant, who was living in Dubai’s high-end financial district, the DIFC, decided to relocate instead of paying the new rent. Several other DIFC residents reported landlords asking for rent increases of 50% and higher, and many of those have downsized or moved to less expensive areas as a result.

Dubai’s Land Department has a body called RERA, the Real Estate Regulatory Agency, which states that landlords cannot demand a rent increase beyond a certain percentage based on the property’s current market value. But the DIFC operates as its own legal entity, unbound by RERA rules.

“Essentially the DIFC is the wild wild West,” the consultant said, requesting to not be named due to professional restrictions. “No controls whatsoever.” The DIFC Authority did not reply to a CNBC request for comment.

Even outside of the DIFC, though, rents and selling prices are soaring.

“There aren’t enough properties; the Dubai Land Department has recorded an 8% availability which is the lowest since 2008,” said Nazli Acar, a sales and leasing agent at D&B Properties. “Property owners are aware of this, hence why they keep increasing their rental prices. And believe me, there are people willing to pay the price.”

And landlords are finding ways around RERA rules, pushing tenants out by claiming they are moving into the house themselves or selling it, and then renting it to a brand new tenant instead for whom they charge a far higher rent that goes above the RERA limits. This practice is illegal, but happens frequently because many tenants don’t know their rights, brokers say.

Acar described how rents have doubled in various Dubai neighborhoods between 2021 and now. Property prices have, too — CBRE says that selling prices are up 11.5% on average in the year to February 2023.

But many sellers have seen much larger returns. One Dubai expat, who requested anonymity for professional reasons, bought a residential property for roughly 4 million UAE dirhams ($1.09 million) in early 2021, renovated and redecorated it, and within the year sold it for double the price.

The current environment is night and day compared to early 2020.

Eeven before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Dubai’s property sector had fallen some 25% in the previous five years due largely to market oversupply. As the market bottomed out in the spring of that year, buyers snapped up cheap properties, renovated them and began renting to tenants and visitors as Dubai opened its doors to tourists and investors while most of the world remained in lockdown.

Within about 18 months, the sector had staged a dramatic recovery.

It’s well known at this point that a significant proportion of the last year’s property transactions came from Russians. Take a walk around the popular Dubai Marina or Jumeirah Beach Road area and it’s almost impossible not to hear Russian being spoken.

“Due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, we have had a huge influx of Russian clients,” Acar said. “At the end of Q3 in 2022, they were the highest transacting nationality. Again, owners are aware of this and therefore capitalizing on that statistic.”

There’s also been a notable rise in buyers from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and the U.K., Scala said.

The UAE’s policy of being open for business to all nationalities — including those from Israel, who cannot enter several Muslim countries, and from Russia which is heavily sanctioned by the West — has paid off, as well as Dubai’s openness and relative normality during most of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The country’s various liberalizing social and economic reforms over the last few years, like its remote-worker visa and allowing 100% foreign ownership of certain businesses, have also attracted new residents and companies.