Renting
What to Check Before Renting an Apartment in Egypt
A practical walk-through of what to look at before you commit to a rental — from the meter readings to what's actually written in the contract.
Published 1 February 2026
Start with the building, not just the unit
It's easy to fall for a well-staged apartment and skip past the building it sits in. Take the stairs, not just the elevator, and see how the common areas are kept — that usually tells you more about how responsive the landlord or management is than anything they'll say in person.
Ask who handles maintenance and how requests get logged. In buildings with a compound management company, this is usually straightforward; in older, individually-owned buildings, it often comes down to how reachable the landlord actually is.
Test everything that can break
Run every tap, flush every toilet, turn on the air conditioning, and check that the water heater actually gets hot within a reasonable time. Open every window and door — in Cairo's older buildings especially, misaligned frames are common and worth knowing about before you move furniture in.
Check the electricity and water meters and note the readings, ideally with a photo timestamped the day you sign. This is the single easiest way to avoid a dispute over usage that happened before you moved in.
Read the contract for what's actually included
Confirm in writing what's included in the rent versus billed separately: building maintenance fees, water, electricity, gas, internet, and any compound service charges. Egyptian rental contracts vary a lot in how explicit they are about this, so don't assume — ask, and get the answer written into the contract itself rather than agreed verbally.
Also confirm the length of the contract, the notice period required to end it, and how the security deposit is handled at move-out. These three details cause more disputes than almost anything else, and they're the easiest to nail down before you sign.
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