Dubai: Thousands of Dubai residents facing unjust rent demands may still find respite at the Dubai Land Department’s Real Estate Regulatory Agency (Rera) but there is no such thing for tenants at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). What’s worse, different rules seem to apply to different people living in the ultra-posh financial free zone that centres around the iconic DIFC gate and houses a ‘city within a city’ to provide a range of business and lifestyle facilities.
While DIFC operates under an independent jurisdiction, what often doesn’t come to light is the lack of robust tenant rights there, tenants told XPRESS.
“I have been living here for two years but only came to realise a month ago when I was asked to vacate that there are virtually no laws protecting our rights here in DIFC,” says Dr. Thomas Boelman, a resident of the Index Tower in the locality.
Boelman paid Dh115,000 for his two-bedroom apartment in the first year and agreed to a hike of Dh10,000 (less than nine per cent) the next year. However, he has now been asked to vacate the place at the end of the term (June). Boelman has decided to move into another two-bedroom apartment in the same building, but he will have to shell out a whopping Dh185,000 – an increase of 48 per cent, much more than what Rera permits even for the highest slab of rent increments.
“Thankfully I earn enough and I am not complaining because I love the building but as a tenant I should have known that there’s no rent cap, no rental index and no one strictly regulating the prices here. We weren’t told this when we first moved in,” says the doctor from Denmark.
The Dubai Land Department confirmed to XPRESS that the area was indeed governed by laws and regulations different from the ones applied elsewhere in Dubai. The DIFC residential block is sandwiched between the glitzy Shaikh Zayed Road on one side and the 312th Road on the other.
A lot more are finding it out the harder way. “I got an email on February 28 from my landowner saying that I had to move out on the expiry of my current contract on May 31 and I haven’t been given any reason for this,” complains Russian expatriate Dmitry Dolzhanskiy who has been living in a one-bedroom apartment in the same building for two years.
Unlike Boelman, who says his contract stipulates a three-month termination notice period, Dolzhanskiy’s contract, a copy of which is with XPRESS, has no mention of this.
When the freelance photographer last checked with a lawyer at the DIFC, he was apparently told this meant his landlord was free to ask him to vacate anytime he wanted and that the ‘laws protected him’.
No DIFC representative came forward to confirm or deny these allegations, despite several attempts by XPRESS to contact their office.
Mainak Maity, an Indian restaurateur who owns a studio apartment at the Liberty House next to the Ritz Carlton hotel, hopes all this changes for the better. “A greedy landlord can have his way, but only to an extent the market allows him to. It’s a short-term gain for an owner but a proper regulation will in the future ensure greater market attractiveness,” said Maity.
