Sunil here to talk about renting a Dubai apartment

It’s smart to face it that the high cost of apartments are not going to come down anytime soon and a Dubai apartment will make you dig a bit deeper into your pockets.

Given that, there are a few other things that you will need to know before you bite the bullet and sign the contract.

I visited one of my friends back in 2007 that lived in an apartment in Dubai.

His experiences with rentals in Dubai were not all that good considering the fact that the owner was more or less intent on increasing the rent as and when it suited him.

In the end, my friend had to move out and seek another option (he currently lives with his parents). When it comes to renting Dubai apartments there are a few things that you need to be aware of.

Generally agents do not even bother to try and return your calls, so you will need to be patient with them. Losing your patience with the agent is not going to make things happen except give you a sore throat, I guess.

Once you have located the apartment that you want, you must realize that the rates advertised in the local classifieds are more or less the annual rates for that apartment. Before stepping into a Dubai apartment, you must remember that the cost of an apartment has more or less quadrupled in the last few years, so any apartment is bound to be a bit expensive.

That said, a normal median apartment in Dubai comes with a few facilities such as a gym and a swimming pool. A squash court or a tennis court could be thrown in the bargain, but as the number of facilities increase, so does the cost. Likewise, apartments with minimal or no facilities at all tend to cost less.

The apartments my friend stayed in came with a bit of their own furniture, such as refrigerator, vacuum cleaner etc. So if you are looking at median apartments with a few facilities, you can expect to see them stocked with some of the same.

But that is not a hard and fast rule, as apartments can be provided just as they are, free of any white goods. The more expensive apartments tend to be spacious with attached bathrooms, with the size of the room getting smaller by the rent.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that a fridge and some of the other white goods came with my friend’s apartment. The fact that most of them did not work was something else altogether lol. Till today, I still consider that a pleasant surprise, especially as the apartment was advertised as ‘unfurnished’.

So if your apartment is advertised as the same, then do not be all that surprised if the landlord starts to use it as a warehouse for his broken down electronics. If the ad says ‘furnished’, then at the very least expect to find ‘workable’ appliances in the apartment when you get there.

Most of the apartment buildings come with security personnel of sorts, with the expensive ones hiring more than one. Do not expect appliances or security personnel with cheap or old apartments.

If you are using an agent, then expect to pay nothing less than 5% of your annual rental rate, but do not worry, as this is just a one-time payment. The rentals may vary from apartment to apartment, but the one thing that you must definitely do is to negotiate a rental contract with the owner for a long term, as it freezes the rental rate.

Bur Dubai is one of those places where you can expect to find expensive apartments, but parking here is an everyday nightmare. Deira on the other hand is a much better locality to get apartments in, as they tend to be less expensive. Dubai Marina is another locality for expensive apartments while Lamcy plaza probably offers the best median rates there are as far as renting a Dubai apartment goes.

2008 Update

Two very good alternatives to searching for places to rent (or “let”) in Dubai are through Yahoo Groups and Craigslist. Craigslist is going global and has expanded to Dubai and the Middle East in general.

On Yahoo Groups, you can most likely find a group that bounces around questions and discusses all sorts of things about Dubai. I am subscribed to a couple of these and have seen so many rental ads go out to its subscribers.

I would still recommend going through an agent as the best and safest solution. It costs money, but nothing worthwhile is free (at least I think so). But if you feel a bit more confident in hunting for your dwelling on your own, definitely consider the 2 wonderful Internet resources above.