How they are set
Every jointly owned building in Dubai has a budget submitted by its management company and approved by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency. Approved budgets are billed and collected through Mollak, the escrow platform that holds owners' association funds. The charge is expressed as dirhams per square foot per year and applied to your unit's registered area.
That means two identical-sized apartments can carry very different bills, and the difference is structural: chillers, pools, security, valet, and how efficiently the building is run.
What a normal rate looks like
As a rough orientation, simpler communities often sit in the low teens per sqft, mainstream towers in the high teens to low twenties, and prime waterfront or serviced towers can run well above thirty. Villas are usually lower per sqft than towers because there is less shared plant, but they carry their own maintenance.
Treat any single number you read online as indicative. Before you buy, ask for the current approved budget for that specific building and the last two years of actuals.
- Ask whether chilled water is included in the service charge or billed separately — this alone can move the number by several dirhams per sqft.
- Check the reserve fund contribution. A building with no reserve is storing up special assessments.
- Check collection rates. If many owners are in arrears, the working budget is under strain.
The effect on your return
Take a 900 sqft apartment renting for AED 90,000. At AED 15 per sqft the service charge is AED 13,500, leaving AED 76,500 before other costs. At AED 28 per sqft it is AED 25,200, leaving AED 64,800. Same rent, same size — roughly 1.3 percentage points of net yield difference on a AED 1.3m purchase.
This is why a per-building view matters more than a per-area average, and why the service charge field in our calculator is the one worth getting right.
See what this means for a specific unit
Enter a price, size and rent — the calculator applies service charges, vacancy, fees and your mortgage to show net yield and monthly cash flow.
Open the yield calculator →Common questions
- How are service charges calculated in Dubai?
- They are charged per square foot of your unit's registered area per year, based on an annual budget submitted by the building's management company and approved by the regulator, then billed through the Mollak platform.
- Can service charges go up?
- Yes. Budgets are reviewed annually and can rise, and buildings can also raise one-off special assessments for major works if the reserve fund is short.
- Do tenants or owners pay the service charge?
- The owner pays the service charge in Dubai. Tenants pay rent, DEWA utilities, the 5% housing fee and usually chiller consumption where it is separately metered.
Keep reading
General information only, not legal, tax or financial advice. Fees, lending rules and residency criteria in Dubai change — confirm current figures with the Dubai Land Department, your bank or a licensed adviser before you commit.