How Many Ejari Can You Have in Dubai? One Per Unit, as Many Units as You Rent, and What Each One Bills

The question usually arrives in one shape. A new lease starts on 1 December, the old one runs to 31 December, and somebody at a counter says you cannot “have two Ejari”. You can. What nobody can do is register on a unit that still has someone else’s Ejari on it, and that is a different rule with a different fix.

At the trading company where I work, the system will not let two open purchase orders claim the same goods receipt. The second one waits until the first is closed. Nobody minds how many purchase orders one buyer has open. Ejari runs the same logic on a flat: one record per unit, closed before the next one opens, and no limit on how many units sit under one name.

How many Ejari can I have in Dubai?

As many as the leases you hold. The Land Department’s register-and-renew service page, updated on 7 October 2026, sets out fees and documents per contract and names no ceiling per tenant. A flat for the family and a studio near work, a home and a small office, or two leases overlapping for a month during a move: each is its own contract, so each gets its own registration.

The limit sits on the property side. Gulf News, reporting the Land Department’s co-living rules in August 2025, quoted it directly: “The issuance of Ejari is limited to one tenancy contract per unit for a single tenant or entity.” An older Gulf News explainer on moving out put the same rule in a property manager’s words: “there should only be one Ejari registration against a property.”

Ejari counts flats, not people. The limit is one per unit, and the bill is one per Ejari.

Can flatmates each have their own Ejari on the same flat?

No. One name holds the registration and everyone else is recorded under it. The same 2025 report: “All additional occupants residing for one month or longer must be registered in the DLD system using the REST app.” The co-occupant screen sits inside the main tenant’s property record in the app or on the DLD website, and asks for each person’s Emirates ID and date of birth.

Turning a room into a second contract is a separate legal question. Article 24 of Dubai’s tenancy law says the tenant “may not assign the use of or sub-lease the Real Property to third parties unless written consent of the Landlord is obtained”, and Article 25 adds that if the tenant sublets without it, “the eviction will apply to the Tenant and to the Subtenant”. The one name on the Ejari carries the contract, the DEWA account and the housing fee. Whatever the flatmates pay each other is a private arrangement the register never sees.

Why the new Ejari gets blocked, and who clears it

The “you cannot have two” message almost always means the unit, not the person. A registration does not lapse when the lease ends. It has to be cancelled, and until it is, the next tenant’s registration fails and DEWA has nothing to open an account from. The 2022 Gulf News piece put cancellation on the landlord.

The Land Department’s cancellation service is free in the app and costs a “Service Partner Fee AED 40 + VAT” at a trustee centre. When the contract is still active, the centre asks for a “Letter from the property owner requesting cancellation”. So a tenant leaving early should ask for that letter before handing back the keys. Without it, an Ejari stays live in their name on a flat they no longer rent, and the next tenant, the landlord and eventually the outgoing tenant will all run into it.

How much is Ejari in Dubai, and how much is the renewal fee?

Same service, same price. The Land Department page lists “AED 100 for registering a tenancy contract” plus an “AED 10 knowledge fee” and an “AED 10 innovation fee”. Through the Dubai REST app the service partner adds AED 55 plus VAT, for AED 177.75. At a trustee centre it is AED 95 plus VAT, for AED 220. Registering and renewing are one service, so each lease pays this once a year, and two leases pay it twice: AED 355.50 in the app or AED 440 at a counter. The line-by-line breakdown, and what the certificate opens, is in my earlier piece on Ejari registration explained.

What a second Ejari actually costs

The certificate is the cheap part. Each Ejari is also a DEWA account. DEWA’s Ejari FAQ lists a “Refundable security deposit for electricity and water connections” of AED 2,000 for an apartment and AED 4,000 for a villa, plus “supply activation fees” of AED 130. Then the housing fee. As a municipality official told Gulf News, it “is calculated as five per cent of the annual rent”, “collected in 12 equal monthly instalments that appear in the monthly Dewa bill”, and “applied only on the rent stated in the standard tenancy contract registered with the Ejari”. Each Ejari bills its own fee from its own contract.

Here is that December as an illustration, with the old flat at AED 80,000 and the new one at AED 95,000:

For the overlap month, the housing fee alone is AED 729.16 across two bills, and AED 4,000 in DEWA deposits is parked at once until the old account’s final bill settles. None of that is a penalty. It is the price of two registrations existing at the same time, which is allowed, and worth knowing before choosing the move-in date.

I log each lease as its own line under Rent, with the Ejari fee, the housing fee and the deposit attached to it, not to me. Ejari is counted per flat, and so is everything it bills.