Dubai rental yields by area: the cheaper the address, the bigger the number

Rental yield is the number every Dubai investment pitch quotes and almost nobody sources. The reason is that it needs two datasets that rarely sit in the same place: what a flat rents for, and what an equivalent flat actually sold for. Asking prices divided by asking rents is not a yield, it is two opinions divided by each other.

We hold both sides. 87,961 live rental listings, and every sale the Dubai Land Department has registered. So: median asking rent per square foot, divided by the median price per square foot that finished apartments in the same area really registered at over the last twelve months.

Gross yields, area by area

Area	Asking rent AED/sqft/yr	Registered sale AED/sqft	Gross yield
International City Phase 1	68.2	650	10.5%
Dubailand Residence Complex	79.3	817	9.7%
Dubai Sports City	90.1	932	9.7%
Dubai Production City	98.2	1,021	9.6%
Dubai Silicon Oasis	85.0	942	9.0%
Jumeirah Village Triangle	111.5	1,310	8.5%
Dubai Studio City	116.3	1,390	8.4%
Town Square	109.1	1,353	8.1%
Arjan	105.9	1,341	7.9%
Damac Hills	105.7	1,357	7.8%
Dubai Science Park	107.9	1,391	7.8%
Jumeirah Village Circle	100.4	1,301	7.7%
Dubai South	81.4	1,066	7.6%
Jumeirah Lakes Towers	110.0	1,462	7.5%
Business Bay	127.9	1,868	6.8%
Meydan and Sobha Hartland	133.8	2,051	6.5%
Downtown Dubai	165.3	2,539	6.5%
Dubai Hills Estate	148.4	2,312	6.4%
Dubai Creek Harbour	141.6	2,341	6.0%
Dubai Marina	117.7	1,971	6.0%
City Walk	164.1	2,791	5.9%
Palm Jumeirah	151.5	2,670	5.7%

The relationship is almost mechanical

Sort that table by sale price instead of by yield and it barely changes order. Every area under 1,100 AED per square foot yields above 9 percent. Every area above 2,300 yields under 6.5 percent. There is no area in Dubai that is both cheap to buy and cheap to rent, and none that is both expensive to buy and generous on yield.

That is worth stating because it is the actual answer to "which area has the best rental yield in Dubai". The question has a stable answer and it is not a secret: the areas with the highest yields are the ones with the lowest prices per square foot, and they have been for years. Yield in Dubai is not a discovery, it is a trade. What you are being paid for at 10.5 percent in International City is 20-year-old stock, a thinner tenant pool and a resale market with fewer buyers.

Downtown Dubai has the highest rent per square foot on this table, at 165.3, and one of the lowest yields, at 6.5 percent, because its sale price is 2,539. Rent per square foot and yield are close to unrelated.

Smaller units yield more, by three whole points

The same pattern shows up inside a single building, and here it is even cleaner:

Type	Asking rent AED/sqft/yr	Registered ready sale AED/sqft	Gross yield
Studio	128.2	1,304	9.8%
1 bedroom	116.3	1,318	8.8%
2 bedroom	113.9	1,478	7.7%
3 bedroom	123.7	1,857	6.7%

A studio and a one bedroom sell for almost the same price per square foot, 1,304 against 1,318, but the studio rents for 10 percent more per square foot. That is the whole yield gap in one line: small units are priced like the units next to them and rented at a premium per foot, because rent is set partly by the number of doors and not only by the floor area behind them.

What gross leaves out, and it is not small

Every number above is gross. Three things sit between it and what reaches a landlord's account.

Service charges are the big one, and they are the reason we will not publish a net figure yet. In Dubai they commonly run 10 to 25 AED per square foot a year, and are charged on the same square feet the rent is charged on. At 15 AED per square foot against a rent of 100, that is 15 percent of gross rent gone, which turns a 7.7 percent gross into roughly 6.5 percent before anything else. In the higher-service towers on this list the charge is at the top of that range, so the areas with the lowest gross yields also tend to lose the most to it.

Vacancy. A yield assumes twelve months of rent. Dubai leases are usually annual, and a changeover with two weeks empty is 4 percent of the year.

Asking versus achieved. These are advertised rents. A landlord's renewal is also capped: under Decree No. 43 of 2013, no increase is permitted at all where the rent is within 10 percent of the market average for similar units, rising in steps to a maximum of 20 percent where the sitting rent is more than 40 percent below the average, with 90 days' notice required. So a high advertised rent on a vacant unit and the rent a sitting tenant can be moved to are two different numbers, and the law makes the second one the slower of the two.

Use these numbers

Every figure here is free to reproduce with attribution and a link back to this page. If you want a yield for a specific building rather than an area, or the same table on achieved rather than asking rents, ask and we will send what we can.

To run your own numbers on a specific unit, including the service charge this report deliberately leaves out, use our free rental yield calculator. Live rental stock is at Dubai rentals, and finished stock for sale is on our resale listings.