Smart Rental Index 2026: What It Did to Renewals

What happened, and when

In January 2025 the Dubai Land Department, through RERA, replaced the old area-level rent calculator with the Smart Rental Index. The old index was updated once a year and gave one figure for a whole district. The new one is tied to Ejari, gives every residential building a rating from one to five stars based on its quality, age, facilities, maintenance and location, and produces a market rent for that building rather than for the neighbourhood around it. The launch came with one hard number. DLD Director General Marwan Al Marri said more than 900,000 rental contracts were registered in Dubai in 2024, 8% more than the year before. Later in 2025 DLD stated that the index had been instrumental in stabilising rental prices and mitigating inflation in the emirate. That is the department’s own assessment; it has not published a separate count of renewals refused or disputes decided under the new index, and we do not invent one. Twenty months in, the practical change is simple. A landlord and a tenant used to argue about which district average applied. Now the Ejari number and the building’s star rating produce one figure, and the increase, if any, follows from it.

The slabs did not change, the reference point did

The permitted increase is still governed by Decree 43 of 2013. What changed is what the increase is measured against.

Two consequences follow. A tenant in a well-kept five-star building who signed a fair rent in 2024 is very often within 10% of the building’s index figure and faces no increase at all; one third-party review of DLD data in March 2026 found that was the most common renewal outcome. A tenant in a two-star building whose landlord has been pricing off the glossy tower next door now has a lower reference figure, and the same slab produces a smaller increase, or none. The process rules are unchanged too. Any increase needs 90 days’ written notice before the renewal date. Eviction still requires 12 months’ notarised notice on the narrow grounds the law allows, sale or the owner’s personal use among them, and a rise the index does not support can be refused and, if pushed, taken to the Rental Disputes Centre, where the index figure is the official reference.

Where registered rents actually sit

The index is one figure per building; the register is what tenants actually signed. These are the Ejari medians for the trailing 12 months to 3 September 2026, from DLD, for apartments in eight of the communities we are asked about most. Sample sizes are in the thousands in every case.

What a tenant should do at renewal

Run the check before the notice arrives, not after. The RERA rent calculator on this site applies the Decree 43 slabs to your current rent and the index figure; the DLD calculator itself needs your Ejari number and gives the building-level result. If the increase you are sent is above the slab, reply in writing citing the index figure and the decree. If you are within 10% of the index, the correct answer to a proposed increase is no, politely. If you are well below it, the increase is coming and the question is whether the property is still worth the new figure against the medians above. A move is cheaper to price than to regret.

What a landlord should do at renewal

Check the building’s rating and the index figure first, then serve the 90-day notice with the calculation attached. A landlord sitting 30% below the index can lawfully take 10% this year and more next; a landlord within 10% cannot take anything, and a demand that ignores that is a dispute you will lose with a filing fee on top. The rating is also the lever: a building whose maintenance and facilities lift its stars lifts every tenant’s index figure with it, which is why owners’ associations now care about the criteria. Where the gap to market is large, the choice is between a slab-limited increase with a tenant who stays and a vacancy with a new tenant at market. Vacant months cost more than most slab gaps.