Middle East Business

Dubai's monthly rent scheme moves the payment rhythm of a short let inside a registered tenancy

By Staff Writer  |  28 August 2026

Flexi Rent lets tenants renting through participating companies pay monthly, quarterly or annually, and agents expect it to pull demand back from short-term lets as the rental market softens.

The Dubai Land Department launched Flexi Rent in June in partnership with 12 property companies, allowing a tenant who rents through a participating company to choose a monthly, quarterly or annual payment plan instead of the one or two cheques an annual tenancy has traditionally demanded. The scheme was announced earlier in the year and is expected to be rolled out shortly.

The argument made for it by senior agents on 24 August is that the real barrier was never affordability but the size of the cheque asked for at the start. On that reading, tenants who wanted a year in one place were signing short-term contracts instead, and paying a premium to get monthly payments.

There is a big number of people that have decided to live for a year, but they just move into short-term rental contracts because they cannot pay the bigger cheques. Those people will now prefer committing to the annual contract, but then having the payment flexibility

Farooq Syed, chief executive of Springfield Properties

The market it lands in

The emirate recorded 115,992 rental transactions worth Dh10.18 billion in the second quarter. Leasing volume fell 19 per cent quarter on quarter and total rental value fell 18 per cent. New contracts fell 15 per cent to 42,100 and renewals fell 20 per cent to 73,892, so renewals made up about 64 per cent of recorded activity. Median rental pricing fell 7 per cent to Dh93 per square foot.

A short let and an annual tenancy are different legal animals wearing the same payment schedule. Flexi Rent puts the monthly rhythm inside a registered Ejari tenancy, which carries Smart Rental Index protection and recourse to the Real Estate Regulatory Authority. The tenant keeps the cash flow and gains a regulated contract. What the landlord loses is the premium the short-let route used to command.

Where the demand comes back from

Rohit Bachani, co-founder of Merlin Real Estate, called the narrowing of that gap "the most underestimated consequence of the initiative". He said a large share of monthly holiday-home tenants had never been seeking flexibility of lifestyle but flexibility of payment, and had been paying a meaningful premium over the annual equivalent to get it.

He expects the annual market to reclaim demand that drifted towards short stays over the past three years, particularly among mid-income professionals and young families, while short-term lets remain the right fit for genuinely transient residents, corporate assignments and tourists.

What a landlord should read into it

Renewals at roughly two thirds of all recorded lettings say that most of this market is existing residents staying where they are. A payment structure that removes the reason to leave for a serviced apartment is aimed at the other third, and at the arrivals who have been treating a monthly holiday-home booking as a probationary tenancy while they decide where to live.

The terms belong to the Land Department. The premium the scheme removes belonged to the market, and it has been paid by tenants who wanted a year and could not write the cheque for one.