Posted abroad, coming back
A two or three year contract elsewhere, with a home to come back to. Shipping a flat twice costs multiples of storing it once.
Long Term Storage in Dubai
A long booking is not a short booking that went on longer. It is packed differently, racked differently and priced differently, and getting that wrong at collection is what people regret eighteen months later. This is the long-stay end of self storage in Dubai.
Most long bookings here start the same way: a posting abroad, a property sold before the next one is bought, a family splitting a move across two countries, or a business holding records it is legally required to keep. What they share is that nobody wants to think about it again for a year.
There is no maximum term and no renewal to renegotiate. Billing stays monthly at AED 12.65 per sq ft, VAT included, on the space your goods occupy, and you can end it or change it at any point without a penalty.
What changes when the booking is long
Three things, and they all happen at collection rather than later.
Packing gets more thorough. Over a fortnight, a blanket over a sofa is fine. Over two years it is not — upholstery wants to be fully wrapped and sealed, mattresses want covers rather than sheets, and anything with a fabric surface wants to be off the floor and away from a wall. The crew packs to the term you tell them, so tell them the real one.
Stacking gets planned around access. A short dense stack is cheap and awkward to reach into; over a long term you will almost certainly want something back at some point, so we leave a lane. That costs slightly more floor space and saves a genuinely irritating afternoon later.
And the inventory matters much more. Over three weeks you remember what you stored. Over three years you do not, and neither does anyone else. Everything is logged on a signed inventory at collection, and that document is what makes a partial retrieval two years later a phone call rather than a search.
If your dates are closer to weeks than years, short term storage is the page that describes how those bookings are handled instead.
Who books long term storage in Dubai
Four situations account for most of it. None of them are people who ran out of cupboard space.
Sold before you bought
The sale completed, the purchase has not. Storage bridges it without forcing you into a rental you do not want.
Records you must keep
Company records with a mandated retention period. Business storage in Dubai covers document and archive retention properly.
Furniture worth keeping
A commissioned dining table or an inherited piece that does not fit the current place but is not going anywhere.
What a long booking costs to hold
The rate does not change with the term — AED 12.65 per sq ft per month, VAT included, on the space used. What changes is that the transport becomes a small share of the total.
| Home size | Typical space | Transport as a share of a 2-year total |
|---|---|---|
| Studio | ~30 sq ft | Meaningful — worth packing tightly |
| 1 bedroom | 60–90 sq ft | Small once spread over 24 months |
| 2 bedroom | 120–150 sq ft | Small |
| 3 bedroom villa | 240–270 sq ft | Negligible against the holding cost |
The lever that actually moves a long-term bill is volume, not rate. An afternoon spent deciding what genuinely comes back is worth more than any negotiation — the size guide is the honest way to work out what you are really storing.
Before you store something for years
Six things that are easy at collection and irritating afterwards.
- Empty and dry every appliance. A washing machine or fridge stored with residual water is the single most common cause of a bad smell on return.
- Take the batteries out of everything. Leaked alkaline is what ruins remote controls, torches, toys and clocks in storage, and it is entirely avoidable.
- Keep documents with you, not in the box. Passports, Emirates ID, tenancy contracts, title deeds, share certificates — assume you will need them at short notice.
- Photograph anything valuable before it is wrapped, and say so on the quote if you are storing art, antiques, instruments or specialist equipment.
- Label by room, not by contents. “Guest bedroom 1 of 4” is more useful in two years than a list you will not read.
- Tell us which cartons you might want early, so they are racked where they can be reached without moving everything else.
There is also a list of things that cannot be stored at all — prohibited items has it, and it is short but not obvious.
Common questions
There is no maximum. Some customers have been storing with us for years, and nothing needs to be renewed or renegotiated to continue — billing simply carries on monthly at the same rate on the same space.
The rate is the same, AED 12.65 per sq ft per month VAT included. What makes a long booking cheaper in practice is that the one-off transport cost is spread over many more months, and that a well-packed long booking usually occupies less floor space than a hurried short one.
Yes, and long bookings are racked with that in mind. Partial retrieval is normally arranged within 24 to 48 hours and does not require closing or changing the booking. Tell us at collection which items you are most likely to want and they will be placed accessibly.
Goods are stored indoors in a covered warehouse and kept off the floor, not in a yard or a shipping container, which is the distinction that actually matters here. Wrapping is done before items leave your property so nothing is packed with dust already on it.
You can authorise someone else to receive a delivery — tell us who, and we deliver to the address you nominate. This is common with long bookings and it does not require you to be in the UAE.
Yes. A second collection is quoted as its own job and the stored volume simply increases from that month. You do not need to close and reopen anything, and there is no fee for changing the size of what you store.
Talk to us before that happens rather than after. Bookings are month to month and can be paused in the sense of being ended, but goods cannot be held indefinitely against an unpaid account, so an early conversation is far better than a missed one.
More in Self Storage Dubai
Everything below is part of the same service — pick the page that matches what you are storing.
Short term storageTwo weeks to three months, for the gap between Ejari leases.Storage pricesWhat a studio, 1BHK, 2BHK and villa actually cost per month.Unit sizesSquare footage by home size, with what fits in each.Climate controlled storageWhat a Dubai summer does to stored goods, and what stops it.
Storing something for a year or more?
Tell us the term as well as the size. It changes how we pack it, and that is the part that matters over years.
+971 50 577 3388 · support@safestorage.ae · from 12.65 AED per sq ft, VAT included