How To Find Houses For Rent In UAE

Are you moving to Dubai or Abu Dhabi with your Family? If so, you must find a cheap house for rent in these costly cities. If you are an employee of a big company, your company will provide you with a studio room or you have to share a room with another employee. Sometimes it’s free of cost and sometimes you have to pay the rent. When you get the job offer, your company will tell you what facilities they provide for employees who come on job visas. Some companies here also give you a free company car and petrol after 2 years of working or immediately if you need it right now for work.  They also provide health insurance for the employee. Some companies give health insurance to families and family visas too. Some give only one of these and some companies don’t give both. It all depends on which company you choose and what is your salary package.

If you get a family visa and family health insurance, you are very lucky. Most of your salary will be saved. You will just need to spend some amount of your salary on house rent and your kid’s school fees. If you live in Abu Dhabi, tap water and electricity bills are free. You can use as much water and current as you want. There will be no separate bills. You just need to pay the rent of the house and a small amount for maintenance.  This sounds interesting, right? But do you know? The rent of houses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi are almost the same. In Dubai, you have to pay separate water and electricity bills along with rent and maintenance. But all these bills in Dubai combined make the rent of the house in Abu Dhabi.  In this article, I will share with you my experiences of living in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

My Dubai Home:-

When we were in India, my husband was in Dubai and he applied for a family visa through an agent. His company didn’t provide any family visa or insurance. So he had to do it all by himself. After applying for a family visa he started looking for a house for rent as a family visa can come within 2 weeks.  There is an app here called Dubizzle to find properties for rent or buy. Since he was new to UAE, he didn’t know any real estate agents so he had to go through this app. The app had all kinds of properties and houses for rent in every area in Dubai. He searched so many houses in Dubai in every area that was near to his office and finally chose International City as it was a bit cheap, spacious, had balconies, and was near to the office. He contacted the agent who posted the photos of the house, went and saw the condition of the home, talked to the owner directly on the phone, and then made a 6-month payment as rent for the house. Before this, some other agent showed him so many houses but he didn’t like them as they were too small, untidy, and without balconies.

We chose International City as it was on the outskirts of Dubai and a little bit cheap. But it had all the necessary shops and hospitals all around. It also had a big mall nearby called the Dragon Mart which had almost everything that you wanted to buy. From very cheap to luxury items. It was a walkable distance from our home. The international city has so many clusters like France, China, Russia, India, and Arabian clusters. The buildings in these areas are designed according to their local designs just like China clusters have buildings that are designed like the buildings in China. The shops also in those areas have their local names written in their language. We chose the Arabian cluster as the design of the building was like the locals there and very beautiful. It was also spacious with balconies. There was a supermarket right beside our building. And a spa shop on the right side of the building. And also a small park just 3 minutes away from the building. The building had all the facilities. It had a lift, 24/7 water, and electricity, a security guard, a securely locked main door, and a garbage room on every floor to throw all the waste.

The house was also very beautiful. It had an open kitchen, central AC, one big hall, one big bedroom along with a big attached bathroom, one small guest bathroom, built-in cupboards, the exhaust system in the kitchen and bathrooms, fire alarm in every room, fire extinguisher in the kitchen, and 2 balconies. There was only one problem. There were too many pigeons in that area. They all used to live on our home’s balconies. And their smell was all around whenever we opened the balcony door. Water, electricity, and maintenance had separate bills. The bill depends on how much water and electricity you use. It’s not free like in Abu Dhabi.

Apps and Websites for Renting and Buying Properties in UAE:-

• Property Finder
• Bayut
• Dubizzle
• Housing.
• rentitonline.ae
• Skyloove.com
• betterhomes.com
• savills.com

You can choose anyone you like. We chose Dubzille because it has so many options for rent and the availability of houses for rent was more compared to all the other apps. Since the app is an online product, you have to be very careful about spam, fraud, and which house you choose. The houses for rent in all these apps are either posted directly by the owner or by agents. When you click on contact the owner of the house to talk about the rent, the other person can be the owner or agent. So don’t just look at houses on apps and rent them. Talk to their owners or agents and tell them to show the house completely before making any payment. Because so many houses here look different from the original. In photos, they might look very clean, new, and beautiful. In reality, they may be very untidy, with broken walls, broken cupboards, and cracks in the walls. So please go and take a look at the house properly. If you contact one agent through the app, it becomes very easy for you to search for other houses as these agents send you so many other house options on your WhatsApp number. You can choose any one day and go and look at all those houses. You will get an idea of which house is better for you and your family if you go through all of them.

My Home In Abu Dhabi:-

After 6 months of staying in Dubai, my husband got a job offer in Abu Dhabi with a better package than before. So we planned to move to Abu Dhabi. It was a bit risky and we didn’t have enough money to do all this shifting process. But since the salary was good and Abu Dhabi is a more peaceful city than Dubai we planned to shift. For those 5 months, my elder son did not go to any school as admission in UAE starts in October for the next academic year and we came to Dubai in June. Since we were on a family visa for 2 years and our health insurance was also done for one year, it would become a loss if we shift now. The good part was that the company that was offering job in Abu Dhabi provided health insurance for all the family members. However, it was not offering a family visa and our family visa will change when we shift to Abu Dhabi as Abu Dhabi is a different emirate.

Now we had two options to shift to Abu Dhabi. One is to go to India and my husband will go to Abu Dhabi and call us again once our family visa is changed to Abu Dhabi. Another was to shift to Abu Dhabi and stay at some other house till we got our family visa. There was a period of 60 days within which we had to get the family visa from the Abu Dhabi embassy. If we don’t get the visa within this period we have to go to India. So we just tried our best and left everything to god. We shifted to my husband’s brother’s home with all the luggage. Slowly my husband joined the company, and he got his Emirates ID. Once he got the Emirates ID, he changed our family visa. This took exactly one month so we didn’t have to go to India. After getting the visa, we joined our kid in school and to know how to apply for school admission in Abu Dhabi please read this article.  Admission process in Abu Dhabi schools. After 2 months of staying in my husband’s brother’s home, we shifted to our new home in Abu Dhabi. I personally searched the house for rent to look for a perfect house. I went through all the apps and websites in search of a good and affordable home. At first, we planned to move to an area that is near to my son’s school. But that area was very far away and didn’t have any facilities like hospitals or supermarkets nearby. So we planned to shift to MBZ (Mohammed Bin Zayed City) which was just 15 minutes away from the school and 20 minutes away from my husband’s office.

Finding a good home in this area was tough. There were only studios, and second-floor or third-floor apartments available here. Houses with balconies were only one or two as all the other houses were already full. I went through almost 25 homes and selected only 2. There were other good homes with balconies and lifts and 2bhk at an affordable price but they were 40 minutes away from my husband’s office. So we chose only the MBZ area. There are only villas here in this area. Villas are divided into so many portions like studios, 1 bhk, and 2 bhk. After searching for so many houses, I selected 2 houses in that area. One had a very beautiful balcony with an outside view and the other had a balcony without any outside view as the walls of that balcony were very high and we could not see anything outside. Since kids like to see from balconies we selected the 1bhk house with a balcony view. After selecting, we talked to the owner of the house and went and checked for everything. The house was a bit smaller than our Dubai home but it was good as houses here are very costly. It had a small hall, a very small kitchen, a small bathroom, a good balcony, and a big bedroom. Electricity and water were free here. It is all included in the rent along with maintenance. But the rent of this house was just the same as the rent, water, and electricity bill of our Dubai home. So there was not much difference. This time we didn’t pay the 6 months’ rent directly as we didn’t have that much money. We paid for 3 months and advance separately. The house also had a parking slot but if we wanted the slot we had to pay 1000 dirhams more along with rent. So we didn’t take it and we parked our car outside as there was so much parking space left in this MBZ area. The villa was very secure with locked doors and a watchman. There is a pin to open the small door and to open the big gate you have to ring once to a specific number. Once you ring the phone, the door will open automatically and close on its own after 5 minutes. The parking area below our house was free to use by anybody. In the evenings all the people from the buildings come down and play together. My son cycles here and plays football too. So if you are planning to shift or move to a new location, try searching the houses one month before the date of shifting. So that you can go all through the different options of homes available here and their rents.