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You can buy an apartment in Dubai in a week. Managing it from the Czech Republic, however, is a job for the whole year: rent is paid in advance by cheques that someone must physically collect and deposit at a bank in the Emirates, the contract is registered with the authorities and someone has to hand over the keys. This article is for owners who live in the Czech Republic or Slovakia and are dealing with managing a property in Dubai remotely: whether to hire a property manager, what property management fees in Dubai look like and how to choose the right company.
We cover the two models separately. A long-term rental means an annual contract and a tenant who lives in the apartment. Short-term stays, known in Dubai as holiday homes, mean a nightly price and guests who come and go. The manager's fee, the owner's obligations and the amount of work differ so much between them that it makes no sense to compare figures from one model with the other.
Table of Contents
What does a property manager in Dubai do?
They take over the running of the property on the owner's behalf, from finding a tenant to handing the apartment back. For a long-term rental this is mainly administration, money and maintenance; for short-term stays it is day-to-day operation similar to a hotel.
The standard for a long-term rental includes:
- advertising the apartment, viewings and screening applicants,
- drawing up the tenancy contract and registering it in the Ejari system,
- collecting the cheques and the rent,
- coordinating maintenance and repairs, i.e. finding a tradesperson and letting them into the apartment,
- regular inspections and handover reports at move-in and move-out,
- statements and a regular overview for the owner.
For short-term stays, this extends to managing listings and nightly prices on booking platforms, guest check-in and check-out, cleaning and laundry between stays, registering guests with the authority, remitting the Tourism Dirham and restocking equipment. That is why the fee is at a different level, as we show below.
Registering the tenancy contract is not optional. Dubai Law No. 26 of 2007 regulating the relationship between landlords and tenants states in Article 4 that all tenancy contracts are registered with the regulator RERA. Who physically files the registration is up to the parties; the obligation always applies.
Why can't a Dubai apartment be looked after remotely without a manager?
Because most steps around a tenancy in Dubai are physical and tied to someone who is in the country. It is not about convenience, but about the fact that without a local person, some steps cannot be done at all.
Rent comes mainly in cheques. Annual rent in Dubai is split into one, two, four or even up to twelve instalments, and the tenant hands them over as post-dated cheques when signing the contract, as described in an overview of ways to pay rent in Dubai. Someone has to collect them, keep them safe and deposit them at a bank in the Emirates on the due date. Some landlords now accept bank transfers as well, but cheques remain the main route, and that is the shortest explanation of why a Dubai apartment does not work remotely without a representative.
Ejari has to be set up and cancelled. Registration costs 177.75 AED through the Dubai REST app and 220 AED at a counter, according to the Dubai Land Department service fee schedule. After the tenant leaves, the registration is cancelled, free of charge through the app.
Maintenance is the owner's responsibility by law. Article 16 of the same law states that unless the parties agree otherwise, the landlord is responsible for maintenance and for repairing defects during the tenancy. From abroad, that means finding a service company, letting it into the apartment and paying for it.
A power of attorney from the Czech Republic is not a formality. The United Arab Emirates is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so a Czech power of attorney needs superlegalisation (page in Czech), not just an apostille. The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes three stages (page in Czech): higher verification by the authority superior to the one that issued the document, then the legalisation section of the ministry's consular department, and finally the diplomatic mission of the state where the document will be used.
For the Emirates, however, that last stage is different from what it used to be. The Czech Embassy in Abu Dhabi points out that since the UAE Embassy in Prague closed on 31 December 2021, a temporary procedure applies to the superlegalisation of Czech documents. So check the current steps before you start arranging the power of attorney, and plan for it in advance, not at the moment you need it.
Deadlines run regardless of where you are. Anyone who wants to change the terms of the contract must, under Article 14 as amended by Law No. 33 of 2008, notify the other party at least 90 days before the contract ends.
How much does property management in Dubai cost?
For a long-term rental, 5% to 8% of the gross annual rent; for short-term stays, 15% to 25% of gross revenue. Nobody caps the fees, so what decides is what is written in the contract.
| Model | Fee | Calculated from |
|---|---|---|
| Long-term apartment rental | 5% to 8% | gross annual rent |
| Commercial space | 7% to 10% | annual rent |
| Short-term stays (holiday home) | 15% to 25% | gross revenue |
| Fixed package | 3,950 to 5,000 AED a year | fixed amount, usually for rents below 100,000 AED |
The same overview points out that management fees are not capped by the regulator RERA and must be clearly set out in a written contract. Without a fee schedule in the contract, you cannot rely on the price being the same a year from now.
To avoid any misunderstanding: the figures in this article are market figures, not our price list. The ranges above describe what companies on the Dubai market charge for management, according to publicly available overviews. We always agree our own price for the specific unit, because it differs by rental model, the size of the apartment and everything the management is meant to cover. Likewise, the rent of 79,000 AED we calculate with below is an advertised price from a market report, not an amount from a registered tenancy contract. The two routinely differ.
What does it come to for a specific apartment?
For a one-bedroom apartment in JVC with an annual rent of 79,000 AED, management costs 12,291 AED in the first year, about 16% of the rent. In the following year, when no new tenant is needed, it comes to 6,200 to 8,200 AED, roughly 8% to 10%.
The rent of 79,000 AED is the average for a one-bedroom apartment in JVC from our overview of Dubai rent prices for 2026, which is based on Bayut's report for the first half of 2026. We calculate the management fee in the middle of the usual range, i.e. 7%.
| Item | First year | Following year |
|---|---|---|
| Management, 7% of rent | 5,530 AED | 5,530 AED |
| Tenant-finding fee, one month's rent | 6,583 AED | not charged |
| Ejari registration via the app | 178 AED | 178 AED |
| Contract renewal | none | 500 to 2,500 AED |
| Total | 12,291 AED | 6,208 to 8,208 AED |
A fixed package at 3,950 to 5,000 AED a year works out cheaper than a percentage of the rent for an apartment like this. Usually, however, it does not include finding a tenant or coordinating repairs, which are exactly the two things a remote owner hires a manager for. Before you compare a package with a percentage, read what it includes.
For short-term stays, the fee is calculated from gross revenue, not from rent. With revenue of 100,000 AED, the manager keeps 15,000 to 25,000 AED, plus a one-off unit set-up fee of 1,000 to 5,000 AED. The higher fee reflects the fact that this is day-to-day operation with guests, not a single annual contract.
Which fees are forgotten in the contract?
The ones that are not paid every month, but with every event. In the Property Finder overview, these are mainly:
- tenant finding, usually one month's rent, i.e. roughly 5% to 8% of the annual rent,
- contract renewal at 500 to 2,500 AED per renewal,
- an individual property inspection at 500 to 1,000 AED,
- a mark-up of 10% to 20% on tradespeople's invoices,
- a one-off short-term rental set-up at 1,000 to 5,000 AED.
The trickiest of these is the mark-up on invoices. It is not paid once but on every repair, almost no one mentions it in their fee proposal, and a remote owner has no way of comparing the price of the work with the local market. Ask about it before you sign the contract.
How to choose a property manager in Dubai?
By licence, a written contract and the way the money flows. Everything else can be fine-tuned along the way; these three things cannot.
- Licence. Managing someone else's property in Dubai is a licensed activity. In the Dubai Land Department list of real estate activities it is listed as Third-party property leasing and management services. You can verify it with the Verify License and Permits service.
- A written contract with a fee schedule. When no one caps the fees, the contract is your only protection. Ask for the one-off items from the section above to be listed in it too.
- The money flow. Whose account the rent goes to, within how many days it is sent to the owner, who holds the cheques and what happens if the tenant does not pay.
- Reporting. How often and in what form you receive an overview of the money and the condition of the apartment.
- Permits for short-term rentals. Running a holiday home rests on the operator's licence and on a permit for each unit separately, as set out in Administrative Resolution No. 1 of 2020. Find out whether the manager operates the unit under their own licence or whether you are expected to hold the permit.
- The building's consent. Not every building allows short-term stays. Check this before you buy the apartment, not when you want to let it to guests.
What can you check yourself from abroad?
Almost everything that matters, in the Dubai Land Department's Dubai REST app. It is the fastest way to verify that what the manager reports has actually happened.
- the electronic title deed for your unit,
- the status of your Ejari registration, including registration, renewal and cancellation of the contract,
- the building service charge index and the rental index for your area,
- verification of licences and permits.
What mistakes do remote owners make most often?
The ones caused by a missed deadline or by no one taking a look. The five most common:
- A missed 90-day deadline. Anyone who wants to change the terms, typically the rent, must give notice at least 90 days before the contract ends. Whoever misses the deadline continues for another year on the original terms.
- Raising the rent by guesswork. How much it may be increased is determined by the RERA rental index. Since January 2025, the Dubai Land Department has added a smart index that rates buildings with one to five stars. We look at it in more detail in our article on Dubai's rental index and star ratings.
- Ejari not cancelled after the tenant leaves. The registration has to be cancelled, otherwise the apartment stays in the system as occupied. Cancellation through the app is free, so there is no reason to put it off.
- Neglected maintenance, especially air conditioning. In a Dubai summer, servicing the air conditioning is not cosmetic, and under Article 16 the responsibility lies with the owner.
- Short-term renting where it is not allowed. An apartment in a building that does not permit holiday homes, or operating without a permit. The authority punishes operating without a permit with a fine, but the specific amounts in the available sources differ so much that we do not list them here.
What does a managed portfolio look like in numbers?
We will show it with our own data. In July 2026, the portfolio we manage had an occupancy of 81.15%, a total of 2,465 booked nights and an average rate of 214.37 AED per night. These figures come from our reporting in the Hostaway system for the period from 1 to 31 July 2026, filtered by guest arrival date.
Two things need saying straight away. This is the result of the whole portfolio, not one specific unit, so it says nothing about the yield of your apartment. And it is a different kind of number from the market ranges above: those describe what management companies charge, this describes what the portfolio earned in one month.
| Booking channel | Share of revenue |
|---|---|
| Airbnb | 79.8% |
| Booking.com | 13.8% |
| Direct bookings and our own booking website | 6.3% |
This split shows something a remote owner will not find out on their own: whoever controls distribution also decides how much your yield depends on a single channel. Four fifths of revenue from Airbnb is comfortable until the platform's rules or the ranking of listings change. That is why we are expanding Booking.com, direct bookings and our own booking website. Ask your manager about this too, whoever they are.
One more caveat, because this is exactly the case where two numbers cannot be compared. In our overview of the Dubai real estate market in 2026, we cited the First Class Property Management index for the second quarter of 2026, which reports occupancy of 87% for professionally managed portfolios against 59% in Downtown. But that figure covers a quarter and uses a different methodology, whereas ours is July alone. Anyone who puts the two side by side is comparing two different things. Context belongs here as well: according to CBRE's market review, Dubai's hotel sector saw revenue per available room fall 35.2% year on year in the first half of 2026, so guests fell away across the whole market, not from one portfolio.
How we handle remote management at CzechIn.ae
We are a Czech real estate agency based in Arjan, Dubai, with RERA licence #45274, six years on the market and more than 400 completed transactions. For owners from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, this removes the most unpleasant part of managing a property remotely: dealing in a foreign language and across time zones. We handle cheques, Ejari, viewings, tradespeople and guest registration on the ground, and the owner receives an overview.
Everything we take over and how handing an apartment over to our management works is described on the property management page. Whether an annual lease or nightly stays pay off better for your unit is covered in our comparison of short-term and long-term rentals.
Do you own an apartment in Dubai and want to stop worrying about it? Get in touch and we will go through what management involves for your unit and what can be handled differently. Start on the property management page.
Still looking for a property? See what the apartments we manage look like, for example a studio in JVC or a one-bedroom apartment in Business Bay. The full selection is in our rental offers, and projects for sale in our property listings. How apartment rentals in Dubai work, short term and long term, we sum up on a single page.
Frequently asked questions
How much does property management in Dubai cost?
For a long-term rental the fee ranges between 5% and 8% of the gross annual rent, for short-term stays between 15% and 25% of gross revenue. There are also fixed packages at 3,950 to 5,000 AED a year, usually for units with a rent below 100,000 AED. Nobody caps the fees; the contract decides.
Do I need a property manager in Dubai if I rent out my apartment long term?
It is not mandatory, but without a representative in the country you will run into problems. Rent comes in post-dated cheques that someone must collect and deposit at a bank in the Emirates, the contract is registered in Ejari, and under Article 16 of Dubai Law No. 26 of 2007, maintenance is the owner's responsibility unless the parties agree otherwise.
Who registers the tenancy contract in Ejari and how much does it cost?
Registration is mandatory for every tenancy contract; who physically files it is up to the parties. Through the Dubai REST app it costs 177.75 AED, at the counter of a real estate trustee centre 220 AED. Cancelling the registration after the tenant leaves is free through the app.
Do I need a power of attorney to manage an apartment in Dubai, and is an apostille enough?
An apostille is not enough. The United Arab Emirates is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so a Czech power of attorney must go through superlegalisation: higher verification by the superior authority, then the consular department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and finally the authorities of the state where the document will be used. Since the UAE Embassy in Prague closed at the end of 2021, a temporary procedure applies; check it in advance.
How do I check that a property manager is licensed?
Managing someone else's property in Dubai is a licensed real estate activity, listed by the Dubai Land Department as Third-party property leasing and management services. You can check the licence and permits with the Verify License and Permits service on the Dubai Land Department website. Do not rely on claims in a proposal.
How far in advance must I notify my tenant of a rent increase?
At least 90 days before the tenancy contract ends. This follows from Article 14 of Dubai Law No. 26 of 2007 as amended by Law No. 33 of 2008, which applies to any change in the terms, including the rent. Whoever misses the deadline continues for another year on the original terms.
Is a fixed package or a percentage of the rent better for an apartment in Dubai?
It depends on what the package includes. A fixed fee of 3,950 to 5,000 AED a year works out cheaper than 7% of the rent for an apartment with a rent of around 79,000 AED, but it usually does not include finding a tenant or coordinating repairs. Compare the scope of the service, not just the price.
