The Landlord Is Selling the Flat: What Changes for the Tenant in Dubai, and What Does Not

The National’s property column on 18 September carried a question from a tenant in Downtown Dubai. Four years in the same flat, good relationship with the landlord, and now the landlord is “thinking of selling because he feels the market has performed well.” The worry was the obvious one: whoever buys it will ask me to leave. Mario Volpi’s answer was short and correct. “Selling a property doesn’t automatically end the tenancy,” and the lease continues “under exactly the same terms until it expires.”

I want to add the part the column had no room for, because it is where the dirhams are. The tenancy survives the sale by law. The deposit and the cheques survive it only if somebody writes them down.

Does selling a flat end the tenancy in Dubai?

No. Article 28 of Law No. 26 of 2007 says that “transferring the ownership of Real Property to a new owner does not affect the Tenant’s right to continue to occupy the Real Property by virtue of the Lease Contract entered into with the previous owner, provided that such Lease Contract has a fixed term.” Article 7 adds that a valid lease “may not be unilaterally terminated during its term by the Landlord or the Tenant.”

So the buyer inherits the contract as it stands: the rent, the payment schedule, the expiry date. A sale in October does not reopen a lease that runs to March. The new owner cannot raise the rent mid-term, and at renewal the ordinary rules still apply: Article 14 of the 2008 amendment requires ninety days’ notice before expiry from whichever party wants to change a term, and any increase is capped by the RERA index, measured against the rent already being paid, not against what the buyer just paid for the flat.

Can the new owner make the tenant move out because of the sale?

Only at expiry, and only with a year’s warning. Article 25(2) of the 2008 amendment lists four reasons a landlord may seek eviction “upon expiry of the Lease Contract”: demolition, restoration that cannot be done with the tenant inside, the owner’s own use or a first-degree relative’s, and (d) “the leased Real Property owner wishes to sell it.” The same article fixes the mechanics: “the Landlord must notify the Tenant of the eviction reasons at least twelve (12) months before the date of eviction, and the notice must be served through a Notary Public or by registered mail.”

A WhatsApp message is not a notice. An email is not a notice. A notarised letter with a date on it is, and the eviction date cannot be earlier than twelve months after it lands. Take a lease that expires on 31 March 2027. If a notarised notice is served on 1 October 2026, the earliest eviction date is 1 October 2027, six months after the contract would have ended, and the rent keeps running at the contract rate until then.

One wrinkle is worth knowing. The law says nothing about whether a notice served by the seller still counts once the buyer owns the flat. BSA Law’s 2023 note on the question reports that “according to several judicial decisions, it has been established that the new owner of the property can indeed benefit from the notice sent by the previous owner requesting the termination of the lease and eviction of the tenant for the purpose of sale,” while adding that there is “no explicit legal provision” and the point “still requires legislative intervention.” The practical reading: if the old owner already served a notarised notice before selling, assume the clock is running, not reset.

Article 26 is the other guardrail. If possession is retaken for the owner’s own use and the flat is rented to a third party within two years, the tenant “may request the Tribunal to award him fair compensation.”

What happens to the deposit and the post-dated cheques on transfer day?

At the trading company where I work, when a customer’s business is sold, the supply contract usually passes to the buyer. Every open item on the ledger does not. The advance we hold, the post-dated cheques in the drawer, the credit note nobody has used yet: each one has to be assigned in writing, or it falls into the gap between two legal entities. Nobody is being dishonest. The buyer’s accountant simply has no record that it exists.

A tenanted flat changes hands the same way, and the tenant is the one holding the open items.

The security deposit first. Article 20 lets the landlord take it “provided that the Landlord undertakes to refund such deposit or remainder thereof to the Tenant upon the expiry of the Lease Contract.” That undertaking was given by the person who took the money. On a AED 100,000 lease with a AED 5,000 deposit, one of two things has to happen at the sale: the seller refunds it and the buyer collects a fresh one, or the handover paperwork records that the buyer now holds it and owes it back. If neither happens, the tenant has a AED 5,000 receivable against someone who has left the building. I covered how slowly a deposit comes back even when the landlord never changes; a landlord who has sold up has even less reason to hurry.

Then the cheques. Post-dated rent cheques are written in favour of the old owner by name. After the transfer, those are instruments payable to someone who no longer owns what they pay for. The clean version is a swap on transfer day: the remaining cheques handed back uncashed, new ones written to the new owner for the same dates and the same amounts, because nothing in the contract has changed. A cheque that stays in the old owner’s drawer is a cheque that can still be presented, and a presented cheque that fails is expensive whoever was in the right.

Last, the Ejari. The registered contract names the old owner. It stays valid to expiry, but the renewal gets registered against the new title deed, so the buyer’s deed is the document that makes the next Ejari possible. Ask for a copy at the swap.

The law moves the tenancy to the new owner automatically. It does not move the deposit or the cheques. Those move on paper, or not at all.

The tenant in Downtown Dubai has less to fear than the letter suggests. The owner is the only party in the arrangement that changed. The rent, the dates, the obligations are exactly what they were on the day the contract was signed, and a buyer who wants the flat empty has to say so through a notary and then wait a year. The whole cost of the sale to the tenant is zero, on three conditions: a line of paper saying who holds the deposit, a cheque swap, and, if eviction is coming, a dated notice with twelve months on it. I keep the deposit as a receivable in Masrofna, tagged to the flat, so that when the counterparty changes the number is already sitting there asking who owes it now.