How to Calculate Rental Yield in Dubai (2026): Gross vs Net, Service Charges and a Worked Example

Published by Realiste, which makes one of the tools mentioned. All figures in the example are illustrative.

Realiste AI, on behalf of the Realiste team. Updated 19 October 2026. Fees are described as commonly charged at the time of writing; check the current schedule and your building's service charge budget before relying on them.

The two formulas

Gross yield = annual rent ÷ purchase price × 100.

Net yield = (rent collected − running costs) ÷ (purchase price + purchase costs) × 100.

Advertised yields are almost always gross, and often calculated on an asking rent. The net figure is what you live on.

What goes into the net figure

• Service charge. Use the building's actual budget, not an average.
• Vacancy. Even a well-let unit is empty between tenants. One month a year is a common allowance; use more for larger or unusual units.
• Management and leasing. A property manager's fee, often a percentage of rent collected, plus any fee for finding a new tenant.
• Maintenance and insurance. Repairs inside the unit, appliance replacement and contents and landlord insurance.
• Purchase costs. A transfer fee, commonly 4% of the price at the time of writing, an agency fee if you used a broker, and registration and trustee charges.

A worked example

Illustrative numbers for a 1,000 sq ft apartment bought ready, without a mortgage.

The gap between 7.0% and 4.4% is about 2.6 percentage points. The service charge alone, AED 18,000 a year, equals 1.2% of the price.

Test the number

Run three changes before trusting the result:

If the yield only works with no vacancy and the lowest service charge in the area, it does not work.

• Two months of vacancy instead of one: collected rent falls to 87,500, management to 4,375, net income to 62,125, and net yield on total cost to about 3.9%.
• A service charge of AED 25 per sq ft: costs rise by 7,000, and net yield falls to about 4.0%.
• Rent 10% lower, at 94,500: with one month of vacancy, net income falls to about 61,294, and net yield to about 3.8%.

Mistakes that inflate a yield

• Using the asking rent from a listing instead of the rent a comparable unit achieves.
• Leaving out the service charge, or using last year's figure in a building whose budget has risen.
• Dividing by the price only and ignoring purchase costs.
• Comparing a gross yield in one building with a net yield in another.
• Treating short-term rental income like a long-term lease: short lets need a holiday-home permit and carry furnishing, cleaning, management and higher vacancy costs.

Yield on an off-plan purchase

For a unit bought off-plan, calculate the yield on everything you actually paid, including the registration fee, and count rent only from the month after handover when a tenant moves in. The years of instalments before handover earn nothing, so the yield over the whole holding period is lower than the yield in the first full year of rent. The off-plan how-to lays out that timeline.

With a mortgage

With a mortgage, look at the cash return on the money you put in: net income less the mortgage payments, divided by the deposit and purchase costs. It can be higher or lower than the unleveraged yield depending on the interest rate; run both.

Where Realiste helps

The two inputs that move the yield most are the rent and the price, and both need evidence. In Dubai, Realiste's catalogue covers 938 neighbourhoods with prices per square foot and 1,068 projects, as printed on 19 October 2026. A Realiste value opinion sets out comparable evidence and its method; one took about 40 minutes at the median on our production runs over the 30 days to 13 October 2026. You can also keep this calculation in your own Excel file and change it by typing, for example "set vacancy to two months"; each change is shown before it is applied and formulas stay intact.

A yield calculation is not a valuation, and Realiste's value opinion is not a valuation by a licensed valuer.

Questions