6.07 AM Friday, 29 March 2024
  • City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
  • Dubai 04:56 06:10 12:26 15:53 18:37 19:52
29 March 2024

Your rent in Dubai will now be set by a new Star rating...

18 per cent survey complete and the difficult areas of Deira has been wrapped up. (Supplied)

Published
By Parag Deulgaonkar

An overhaul of the Dubai’s official rent index is underway.

The Dubai Land Department has already commenced work on a building classification system (BCS) by surveying of 20,000 plots of land, and more than 120,000 units including apartments, offices, retail, schools, and public amenities.

“We are roughly 18 per cent done with the survey and finished with the difficult areas of Deira. We are due to finish the process by next year,” DLD Technical Affairs Department Director Mohamad Khodr Al Dah told Emirates 24|7.

Mohamad Khodr Al-Dah

So how the rent index will change?

The present index takes into consideration only location and the number of bedrooms, but the updated index will include the Star rating criteria (quality, age of the buidling, etc). Each building in the emirate will get a Star rating.

“If you have a new building in Karama, it will be difficult to raise rent because the index looks at only location and bedroom numbers. Now, buildings with the same ratings will be compared,” Al Dah disclosed.

The BCS will also enable to determine service charges and that will be reflected in the service charge indices, the DLD official said.

Sultan Butti Bin Mejren

In fact, qualified engineers and surveyors are now using tablets to gather and verify land and property data on site with various government databases. The initiative is aimed to create a complete database of every single unit (apartment) in Dubai and accord each building with a star rating.

It will therefore benefit not just governmental and regulatory bodies, but also tenants, landlords, investors and businesses.

The project is being monitored by Dubai Executive Council and is aimed to bring more transparent in the market and meet with the directives of Dubai Plan 2021.

DLD Director-General Sultan Butti Bin Mejren, said: “We are confident that the training programme our engineers have conducted, in tandem with system technicians, will guarantee delivery of the project’s core aims.”

Real time update

The smart portable computer units are used by specialized trained staff on site and the system is 100 per cent paperless, with real-time data entry and a 4G data connection. The information gained is directly migrated on to the DLD database through the smart system. The building then receives a star rating out of five based on 60 tailored requirements.

The building classification process begins with a building plot being assigned to an inspector via a GIS-expert administrator. The inspector then visits the site on foot and conducts the survey of the building, going into every floor and taking pictures of the building.

The inspectors are trained to maintain and respect the privacy of the building occupants in line with the law and entry is restricted to the common areas of the buildings. The inspection ends with a list of all the units and floors in the building as well as filling out the 60-point questionnaire.

Emirates 24|7 has reported earlier that the Dubai rent index is being update just once year now from thrice a year earlier. Work has been in progress on the new rent index for some time now, but the date of the release has not been revealed.