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As of March 2025, Dubai's population was estimated to be 3.85 million with 87% of those living in the city being expats. However, despite the high number of arrivals, some expats choose to leave the UAE often to return to their home country or fly away on to their next assignment. Even for the most seasoned expats, leaving a country or city they called home for many months or years is heart-wrenching and comes with administrative steps that must be completed.
Expats leaving Dubai cannot leave organising their departure to the last minute as there are many steps to complete before they can leave the UAE. The most important step is to complete immigration formalities, the most important of which is cancelling you and your dependents' visas and applying for exit permits if required. To do that, you must hand over your passport to your employer. Upon cancelling your visa, you have 30 days to complete all the remaining steps.
Along with completing visa formalities, ensuring your finances are in order should always be at the top of the list for anyone having to leave Dubai. Closing your bank account, settling outstanding credit card bills, settling bank loans and overdrafts, and getting a clearance letter from your bank to pass on to your employer are all essential steps expats leaving Dubai must complete. Failure to do so is a criminal offence and can result in a prison sentence. So, ensure you double check you have settled any outstanding bill whether it is your utilities or your car finance.
An expat who owns a property must, of course, sell it before they leave Dubai. However, those who are renting must find out how they go about terminating their lease. Contact your landlord or estate agent or consult your tenancy agreement so you know how much notice to give. You are then required to get an Ejari clearance from the property owner and the utility companies to cancel the tenancy. The Ejari is a record of your tenancy, it legalizes the relationship between the expat and their landlord and ensures the fairness and transparency of rental agreements.
Deciding what to do with personal belongings is probably the most difficult step an expat has to complete before they leave Dubai. This is because most of these will bring back memories of the happy times spent living in the magical city you called home during your time living in the UAE. This makes it difficult to decide what to keep, sell, or give away. However, ensure you organise to ship the belongings you want way ahead of setting foot in the next place you will call home.
As you must know, most Dubai residents prefer to travel using their own vehicles because of the city’s sprawling design. This means that often selling a car is one of the key tasks an expat has to complete before leaving Dubai.
As with buying a car, the entire process of selling it is done through the RTA, and you must ensure the finance on the vehicle as it will make the process a lot easier.
Even when selling your car to a dealer, these steps are essential. Going through a dealer also means they do the heavy lifting, so you don’t have to wait anxiously whilst someone test drives your car and do not have to deal with the hassle of arranging deposits and payments.
To sell your car to Expat Motors, all you need to do is fill out our sales enquiry form and one of our team will be in touch if your vehicle is of interest to us. Once you have an appointment, please remember to bring the necessary documents. These include: the Mulkiya or vehicle registration card, your Emirati ID card and passport, a valid insurance certificate under the buyer’s naText here ...