The Gap Between Dubai’s Advertised Yields and What You Actually Keep

Dubai closed 2025 with more than 270,000 real estate transactions worth AED 917 billion, per the Government of Dubai's Public Debt Management Office. Nearly every one of those transactions was marketed with the same number: gross yield — annual rent divided by purchase price.

That number is not wrong. It is just not the number that reaches your account.

What the advertised figure leaves out

• Service charges. Billed per square foot per year at the RERA-approved rate for each building — published in the DLD Service Charge Index. This is usually the largest omission, and it varies enormously between buildings.
• The transfer stack. The statutory 4% DLD transfer fee, the registration trustee fee, and typically 2% agency plus VAT — paid once, but real money against your capital.
• Vacancy. No unit rents 365 days a year, every year.
• Management. If you are not in Dubai collecting cheques yourself, someone charges a share of the rent to do it.

Even data providers acknowledge the gap: DXB Analytics states plainly that its published yield figures do not account for service charges, maintenance, vacancy, or management fees. The convention across the market is gross — which means every comparison you make on advertised numbers is a comparison between fictions.

A worked example

Take a common shape of deal: an AED 1.5M apartment of 850 sqft renting at AED 105,000 a year. Advertised yield: 7.00%.

Now run the arithmetic. At a service charge of AED 15 per sqft, 5% vacancy, 5% management, and the full transfer stack amortized into the acquisition cost, net operating income lands near AED 82,000 against an all-in cost near AED 1.6M — a true net yield of about 5.1%.

The gap in that example is 1.86 percentage points. On the money you were told you would earn, that is not a rounding error — it is more than a quarter of the promised return.

Your numbers will differ, which is exactly the point: the gap is knowable, per building, before you buy. The Amrania net yield calculator computes it line by line from inputs you control — arithmetic on disclosed figures, not an estimate, and not an opinion about what any property is worth.

How to use this

• Ask for the building's RERA-approved service charge rate before you ask about anything else.
• Recompute every advertised yield to net before comparing two properties — gross-to-gross comparisons reward the listing that hides costs best.
• Treat the one-time transfer stack as part of your capital, not as noise.

*This article is information, not financial advice, and not a statement about the market value of any property. Figures shown in the worked example are arithmetic on stated assumptions — substitute your own.*