Renewing a residential tenancy contract in Sharjah costs 4% of the annual rent with a minimum of AED 500, and Sharjah Municipality completes the renewal immediately from a single document — your previous contract or an electricity bill. Under Sharjah law the landlord must certify every renewal within 15 days of drafting it.
Now go and look for that sentence anywhere else. Page one for Sharjah renewal queries is a Reddit thread, two Facebook posts, a TikTok and a property portal, and three of the government pages Google surfaces for Sharjah describe Ras Al Khaimah. Sharjah Municipality's own English service record is worse than useless on the number: it reads "From the annual rent value of a minimum of 500 dirhams for residential contracts" and the percentage has simply dropped out of the translation. The Arabic record of the same service, pulled from the Municipality's live service catalogue, reads 4% من قيمة الإيجار السنوي بحد أدنى 500 درهم للعقود السكنية — 4% of annual rent, minimum AED 500.
So a tenant who reads only English cannot work out what the renewal costs, and a tenant who believes the first blog that fills the gap gets a typing-centre quote built on a guess. Every figure below comes from Sharjah Municipality's own service record or from the text of Sharjah's leasing law. Where the government publishes nothing, this guide says so instead of inventing a number.
How do you renew a Sharjah tenancy contract?
Renewing a Sharjah tenancy contract means putting the extended lease back through the Municipality's Lease Contract Attestation Section so the new term is certified. Sharjah Municipality lists the service as "Request to renew a certified lease contract", delivered Express — the renewed document is issued during the transaction, not posted later. The Municipality's own renewal route runs in this order:
- Landlord and tenant agree the new term and the rent, and the landlord draws up the renewal.
- Either party checks what the Municipality will charge, free, through the Rental Regulation Department's fee-enquiry service at shjmun.gov.ae/PublicEServices/Tenancy/ViewRent.
- The renewal is submitted online through Aqari on the Sharjah Digital app or website, or in person at a Tas'heel centre, the Main Municipality Building's Northern Hall in Al Musalla, or the Rental Regulation building in Industrial Area 5.
- The attestation fee and the service fees are paid, and the renewed lease document is issued.
- The certified renewal is kept for the SEWA account, which is keyed to the Municipality's rental file for the same premises.
Sharjah Municipality's Rental Regulation Department answers renewal questions on 06 593 1535. For the full attestation walkthrough, including who is legally liable for the fee and what a first-time contract costs, read our guide to the Sharjah tenancy contract.
How much does it cost to renew a Sharjah tenancy contract?
A Sharjah tenancy contract renewal is priced as a percentage of the annual rent, with a floor, plus small fixed service fees. The table below lists every fee line Sharjah Municipality publishes against the renewal service itself.
A residential rent of AED 45,000 therefore attracts an attestation fee of AED 1,800, because 4% of AED 45,000 clears the AED 500 floor comfortably. The floor only bites on genuinely low rents: a studio at AED 10,000 a year would compute to AED 400, so the Municipality charges the AED 500 minimum instead. Add AED 10 and AED 10.5 whichever route you use, and AED 50 on top if a Tas'heel centre handles the paperwork for you.
Is renewing cheaper than issuing a new Sharjah tenancy contract?
Renewing is cheaper than starting a fresh contract in Sharjah, and the saving sits in the fixed add-ons rather than the percentage. Sharjah Municipality applies the same 4% residential rate to both services, but three fee lines that appear on the new-contract record are absent from the renewal record. The table below sets the two Municipality service records side by side.
A renewal is the lighter transaction by a wide margin, then. Anyone quoting you a renewal price loaded with document fees and counter charges is quoting the new-contract schedule for work the Municipality treats as a renewal.
What does Sharjah Municipality ask for to renew a lease?
Sharjah Municipality asks for one document to renew a certified lease: a copy of the previous contract, or the receipt of the electricity bill. Nothing else appears on the renewal service record — no fresh passport copy, no title deed, no tenancy map. The reason the electricity bill substitutes for the contract is that the Municipality's rental file and the SEWA account for a premises are keyed to each other, which is why the Rental Regulation Department runs a separate free service to retrieve contract information from an electricity account number alone.
✓ Fees due on an attestation or a clearance certificate — shjmun.gov.ae/PublicEServices/Tenancy/ViewRent
✓ Contract details from your SEWA electricity account number — the Municipality charges AED 0 for this
✓ The area rental indicator map, when no previous rent exists for the unit — gis.shjmun.gov.ae/tenancy_e_search
✓ A true copy of a lost lease — AED 30 service fee, AED 20 service-centre fee, AED 10.5 collection fee
What is the 3-year rent rule in Sharjah?
Sharjah's 3-year rent rule comes from Law No. 5 of 2024 on Property Leasing, in force since 19 September 2024. The law states that the landlord "may not increase the agreed upon rent before the expiry of (3) years from the date of the start of the rental relationship, unless the parties to the rental contract agree otherwise." So a renewal falling inside the first three years of the tenancy is normally a renewal at the same rent.
Two further clauses decide what happens afterwards. Where a tenant has accepted an increase inside the three years, the law bars the landlord from raising the rent again "until two years have passed from the date of the increase". And once those periods expire, any increase "shall be at the value of the fair rent", with the controls for calculating fair rent set by the law's executive regulations rather than by the landlord's asking price.
Sharjah's three-year freeze is a genuinely different regime from Dubai's, where increases are governed by a percentage ladder tied to the rental index rather than by a flat multi-year bar. Our guide to how much a landlord can increase rent in Dubai covers that ladder, and none of it applies in Sharjah.
Who must renew a Sharjah tenancy contract, and by when?
The landlord carries the legal duty, and the deadline is 15 days. Law No. 5 of 2024 puts it on the lessor directly: "The landlord is required to certify the lease contract or any renewal of its duration and to pay the applicable fees to the municipality or the authorized entities within 15 days from the date of its drafting." The phrase "or any renewal of its duration" is the clause almost nobody quotes — the 15-day deadline is not a one-off that applies only to a first contract, and it restarts on every renewal.
Where a landlord refuses to certify, Sharjah's law gives the tenant a route rather than a stalemate: the tenant "must request that the emergency judge at the center compel the landlord to certify it" — the centre being the Rental Disputes Centre established in Sharjah by Law No. 6 of 2024. Non-compliance draws "an administrative fine ... on the landlord" in addition to the certification fees that were owed anyway.
Read the practical consequence carefully, because the whole Sharjah rental market gets this backwards. A renewal that was never certified is the landlord's breach and the landlord's fine. A tenant chasing the paperwork is doing the landlord a favour — and is entitled to escalate instead.
What happens if a Sharjah tenancy contract renewal is late?
Sharjah Municipality publishes no grace period for a late tenancy contract renewal, and no figure for the administrative fine. Searching for one returns a confident AED 200 to AED 250 across several property blogs; that number appears on no Sharjah Municipality page, no Sharjah Executive Council decision and nowhere in Law No. 5 of 2024, so it is not repeated here. What the law does fix is the 15-day certification window and the fact that the fine falls on the landlord.
Sharjah has cleared a late-attestation backlog before, which is the most useful thing a tenant in arrears can know. The Sharjah Executive Council issued a settlement decision for unattested leases granting a 50% exemption from attestation fees on contracts unattested and expired before 19 September 2024, plus full exemption from the administrative non-attestation fine. The exemption window ran from 1 November 2025 to 31 December 2025 across residential, commercial, industrial and investment leases, and it has closed. No successor amnesty has been announced.
Can you renew a Sharjah tenancy contract online?
A Sharjah tenancy contract can be renewed online, and the platform is called Aqari, reached through the Sharjah Digital app and website. Sharjah Municipality's service record marks the renewal service as available online and points at the Digital Sharjah service catalogue; the Municipality and the Sharjah Digital Department confirmed in December 2025 that Aqari now covers all types of lease contracts with multiple payment options and a dashboard for each user.
Access is by UAE Pass, which pulls your property and contract details on sign-in rather than making you type them. Sharjah's two directors general — Sheikh Saud bin Sultan Al Qasimi at the Sharjah Digital Department and Obaid Saeed Al Tunaiji at Sharjah Municipality — describe the lease journey as running "from registration to instant issuance", with 95% of processes fully automated.
Aqari also integrates directly with the Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority, which is how a certified renewal reaches your utility account without a second trip. Renewing in person still works, at a Tas'heel centre, the Northern Hall of the Main Municipality Building in Al Musalla, or the Rental Regulation building in Industrial Area 5 — the AED 50 service-centre fee is the price of having someone else key it in.
Renew the paper, then get the flat sorted
A renewal is the cheapest moment in the whole rental year to fix the things you tolerated for twelve months. The lease is signed, the rent is fixed for the next stretch by Sharjah's three-year rule, and nobody is packing boxes. Renewal week is precisely when a deep clean, a repaint, an AC service or a pest treatment costs you the least disruption and buys the most back.
And when you do need a trade in Sharjah, the problem is never finding somebody — it is finding somebody who quotes once and sticks to it. TaskRight is a verified, zero-commission home services platform in the UAE — every provider is RightPro-verified, you compare real quotes side by side, and you hire and pay the provider direct with nothing skimmed off the top.
Tell us what the flat needs and get free quotes from verified Sharjah providers. Compare them, pick one, pay them direct. Sharjah homeowners most often start with home cleaning in Sharjah or a move between units in the same building.
👉 Get free quotes from verified Sharjah providers →
Frequently asked questions about renewing a Sharjah tenancy contract
How do I renew my tenancy agreement in Sharjah?
Renew a Sharjah tenancy agreement by submitting the extended lease to Sharjah Municipality's Lease Contract Attestation Section, online through Aqari on the Sharjah Digital app or in person at a Tas'heel centre. Sharjah Municipality asks for one document — the previous contract or an electricity bill — and issues the renewed lease immediately on payment.
How much is a Sharjah Municipality tenancy contract renewal?
A residential tenancy contract renewal in Sharjah costs 4% of the annual rent with a minimum of AED 500, plus an AED 10 research fee and an AED 10.5 collection fee. Commercial renewals are charged at 5% with the same AED 500 floor, and investment leases at 3% with a minimum of AED 1,000. A Tas'heel centre adds AED 50.
What is the 3-year rent rule in Sharjah?
Sharjah's 3-year rent rule, set by Law No. 5 of 2024, bars a landlord from increasing the agreed rent before three years have passed from the start of the rental relationship, unless both parties agree otherwise. Where a tenant accepts an earlier increase, no further increase is allowed until two years after that increase.
Is there a grace period for Sharjah tenancy contract renewal?
Sharjah Municipality publishes no grace period for a tenancy contract renewal. Sharjah law requires the landlord to certify any renewal within 15 days of drafting it, and imposes an administrative fine on the landlord for failing to do so. Neither the Municipality nor Law No. 5 of 2024 states the fine amount anywhere.
Who pays to renew a tenancy contract in Sharjah?
Sharjah law places the duty to certify a renewal and pay the Municipality's fees on the landlord, not the tenant. Where the landlord refuses to certify, the tenant may ask the emergency judge at Sharjah's Rental Disputes Centre to compel certification. Many Sharjah landlords pass the cost on in practice, which is a commercial negotiation rather than a legal obligation.
Can a Sharjah tenancy contract be renewed online?
A Sharjah tenancy contract is renewed online through Aqari on the Sharjah Digital app and website, signing in with UAE Pass. Sharjah Municipality marks the renewal service as online, and the Sharjah Digital Department reported in December 2025 that 95% of the lease process is automated, running from registration to instant issuance.
Related reading:
- The Sharjah tenancy contract: attestation, fees and who pays
- How to renew Ejari in Dubai — the Dubai equivalent, and a different system entirely
- The Ajman tenancy contract and Tasdeeq
- Verified movers and relocation services across the UAE
Fees and rules in this guide are taken from Sharjah Municipality's own service records for the Rental Regulation Department, from Sharjah Law No. 5 of 2024 on Property Leasing, and from Sharjah Executive Council decisions as reported by the Sharjah Government Media Bureau. Government fees change — verify the amount due through Sharjah Municipality's free fee-enquiry service before paying. Last updated: October 2026
