Glossary of Arab rental terms

The words that appear on a tenancy contract, a cheque or an invoice across the Arab world — defined by someone who had to model them in software. Each term carries its Arabic form, because that is usually what you are looking at.

Post-dated cheque (PDC)

شيك آجل

A cheque written today but dated for a future day, handed over in advance so it can be banked when that day arrives.

The standard way annual rent is settled across much of the Arab world: a tenant hands over two, four or twelve cheques at signing, each dated for the instalment it pays. The cheques exist months before the money does, which is why they have to be tracked as instruments in their own right rather than as payment records.

Presentation date

تاريخ التقديم

The date written on a cheque, being the first day it can be presented to the bank for payment.

For a property manager it is an operational deadline rather than a data field. Banking late delays the money and, where a tenancy is already in difficulty, weakens the position. The practical requirement is a list of every cheque due to be banked in the coming fortnight, across the whole portfolio.

Bounced cheque

شيك مرتد

A cheque the bank returns unpaid, with a stated reason — most often insufficient funds, but also a closed account, a stopped payment or a signature mismatch.

The reason matters more than the fact. In the UAE, insufficient funds alone has generally not been a criminal matter since January 2022, while a payment stopped without lawful cause may still be. The returned cheque is directly enforceable through the execution court.

Ejari

إيجاري

Dubai's tenancy contract registration system, run by the Land Department. Registering a lease produces an Ejari certificate carrying a unique contract number.

The registration is not paperwork for its own sake: the certificate is what a tenant needs to connect utilities, apply for a residence visa for a family member, or bring a case to the rental dispute body. An unregistered tenancy is a tenancy whose occupant cannot do ordinary things.

Tawtheeq

توثيق

Abu Dhabi's tenancy contract registration system, operated by the municipality.

Serves the same function as Ejari in Dubai — a registered contract with an official reference — but is a separate system with its own fields, its own process and its own rules. Software that models registration as one text box has engaged with neither.

Ejar

إيجار

Saudi Arabia's national tenancy platform, through which residential and commercial leases are documented.

Broader in scope than the emirate-level systems: as well as registering the contract it is bound up with the payment and dispute machinery around it. Note the near-collision in English between Saudi "Ejar" and Dubai "Ejari" — they are different systems in different countries.

Security deposit

مبلغ التأمين

A sum held by the landlord for the length of a tenancy against unpaid rent, unpaid bills and damage beyond fair wear and tear, returnable at the end except to the extent those arise.

Commonly five per cent of the annual rent for an unfurnished unit and ten for a furnished one — a market convention, not a statutory rate. It is the landlord's to hold, not to spend: in the accounts it is a liability on the balance sheet until the tenancy ends, never income when received.

See also: Fair wear and tearRead more →

Fair wear and tear

الاستهلاك المعتاد

The deterioration a property suffers from being occupied normally for the length of a tenancy, for which a tenant is not answerable.

The line between this and damage decides most deposit disputes. Two questions apply it better than any list: would this have happened anyway to a careful tenant over this many years, and is the landlord being restored to the original condition or improved beyond it?

Rental index

مؤشر الإيجارات

An authority-published estimate of the market rent for comparable units, used to determine what increase is permitted on renewal.

In Dubai the permitted increase is a function of how far below the index the current rent already sits, in bands. The index itself is revised — including changes to how granular it is — so the figure that matters is the one the official calculator returns for that specific property on the day.

Rent cap

سقف الزيادة

A limit on how much rent may be increased at renewal, set by regulation rather than by the contract.

Dubai works in bands tied to the gap between the current rent and the index: nothing if within 10% of market, rising to 20% where the rent is more than 40% below it. Other emirates and other countries take different approaches, including outright freezes and, elsewhere, no cap at all.

Ninety-day notice

إشعار التسعين يومًا

In Dubai, the minimum notice a party must give before changing the terms of a tenancy at renewal — at least ninety days before it ends, unless agreed otherwise.

Serving late does not produce a smaller increase; it produces no valid increase, and the contract renews on its existing terms. Most refused increases are refused on this rather than on the amount, which makes the operational deadline ninety-plus days before expiry, not expiry.

Service charge

رسوم الخدمات

A recurring charge for the upkeep of shared parts of a building or community — cleaning, security, lifts, landscaping, insurance and the reserve fund.

Normally the owner's liability rather than the tenant's, unless the tenancy says otherwise, and normally levied per square foot of the unit. It is separate from rent and separate from utilities, and conflating the three in a system makes an owner statement impossible to reconcile.

Owner statement

كشف حساب المالك

A periodic account rendered by a managing agent to a property owner: rent collected on their behalf, deductions made, fees charged and the balance remitted.

The document that makes management fees defensible. It requires the agent to hold the owner's money separately from its own in the accounts, which is an accounting structure rather than a report format.

Management fee

أتعاب الإدارة

A managing agent's commission for running a property on an owner's behalf, usually a percentage of the rent actually collected.

Charging on rent collected rather than rent contracted aligns the agent with the owner: an instalment that never arrives earns no fee. It also means the fee cannot be recognised until the money is.

Tenancy contract

عقد الإيجار

The agreement between landlord and tenant setting the term, the rent, how it is paid and what each side is responsible for.

Across most of the region it runs for a fixed year rather than rolling monthly, and the payment schedule — one, two, four or twelve instalments — is a term of the contract rather than a preference exercised later. Registration is usually separate and usually mandatory.

Instalment plan

خطة الأقساط

How an annual rent is divided for payment — commonly one, two, four, six or twelve cheques, agreed at signing.

Fewer cheques usually means a lower headline rent, because the landlord has the money sooner and carries less risk. It is a negotiating variable in its own right, and it determines the entire billing schedule for the year.

Rental Dispute Centre

مركز فض المنازعات الإيجارية

Dubai's judicial body for tenancy disputes, handling eviction, unpaid rent, and disagreements over contract terms.

Separate from the execution route used to enforce a returned cheque. A manager facing an unpaid instalment and an unresponsive tenant is often running both: one recovers the money, the other recovers the unit. Other emirates have rent committees performing an equivalent function.

VAT on rent

ضريبة القيمة المضافة على الإيجار

Residential leases are generally exempt or zero-rated across the Gulf, while commercial leases are taxable at the standard rate — 5% in the UAE, 15% in Saudi Arabia.

The classification follows the unit and its use rather than being chosen per invoice, and there are exceptions that matter: the first supply of new residential property, bare land, and short-term or serviced accommodation are each treated differently from a plain residential lease.

Tax invoice

فاتورة ضريبية

An invoice meeting an authority's requirements for VAT: supplier tax registration number, a unique sequential number, the date of supply, and the tax rate and amount per line.

Two requirements catch people out. The number must be sequential and gapless, which a max-plus-one query cannot guarantee under concurrency — and billing a month of rent is precisely a concurrent workload. And Arabic is required in several jurisdictions, making the document bilingual by design rather than on export.

ZATCA e-invoicing

الفوترة الإلكترونية — هيئة الزكاة والضريبة والجمارك

Saudi Arabia's mandatory electronic invoicing regime, under which invoices are generated in a prescribed format and, in its integration phase, cleared with the authority.

Rolled out in phases and by taxpayer size. For a property business the practical consequence is that a rent invoice is not a PDF the system happens to produce — it is a structured document with a required format, a QR code and an integration to satisfy.

Title deed

سند الملكية

The official document evidencing ownership of a property, issued by the land registry.

A managing agent normally needs sight of it, together with the owner's identification and a management authority, before it can let a unit — which makes document expiry something a system should track rather than something a person should remember.

Occupancy rate

نسبة الإشغال

The share of units in a portfolio that are let, as against those available.

Deceptively simple to compute and easy to overstate. A unit under a contract that has expired without renewal, a unit held for maintenance, and a unit let but not yet occupied are counted differently by different firms — so the number is only comparable when the definition travels with it.

Arrears

المتأخرات

Rent or other charges that have fallen due and remain unpaid.

Meaningfully measured by age rather than as a single total: what is 90 days overdue is a different problem from what became due last week, and a portfolio reported as one arrears figure hides which of the two it is.

Statement of account

كشف حساب

A document listing every charge and every payment on one account over a period, with a running balance.

The one document a tenant actually asks for — for a visa, a bank, or an argument — and the one most systems cannot produce on demand. It has to reconcile with the invoices it is built from, which means it is assembled from payment allocations rather than from payments.

Grace period

فترة السماح

A number of days after rent falls due during which no late fee is charged, set by the tenancy contract.

Worth being explicit about in a system, because the alternative is that late fees are applied by whoever happens to be looking, inconsistently, and each one is then argued individually.

Chiller-free

شامل التبريد

A letting where the cost of district cooling is included in the rent rather than billed to the tenant.

A material difference in the Gulf, where cooling can be a large share of a household's outgoings. Two otherwise identical units at the same rent are not the same offer if one is chiller-free, which is why it belongs on the listing rather than in the contract's small print.