Quick Answer
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Dubai service charges are the annual fee every owner pays to maintain their building or community.
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RERA approves the rate for each building, and it is billed in AED per square foot of unit area.
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Mid-market apartments sit around AED 11 to 18 per square foot. Prime and branded towers run AED 25 to 35 and higher.
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On a 750 square foot one bedroom, that is roughly AED 9,000 to AED 18,000 a year, or AUD 3,400 to AUD 6,800.
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You can check the approved rate for any building for free on the Dubai Land Department service charge index before you buy.
Most Melbourne investors budget for the purchase price, the 4 percent transfer fee and the agent commission. Then the first annual invoice arrives, and the sums stop working.
Dubai service charges are the yearly fee every owner pays for the upkeep of their building or community. They are not optional, and they are not negotiable at the individual level. They are set per square foot, approved by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency, and billed whether the unit is rented, empty, or still being fitted out.
All AED to AUD figures below use a rate of AED 1 to AUD 0.38, the mid-market rate in early September 2026. Rates move, so treat the AUD column as a guide rather than a fixed number.
What Dubai Service Charges Cover
Before you can judge whether a rate is fair, you need to know what you are buying with it. The charge funds three separate things: the day-to-day running of the building, the shared facilities you and your tenant use, and a reserve for repairs that are still years away.
Dubai Service Charges
Every freehold building in Dubai sits under an Owners Association. That association runs the shared parts of the property: the lobby, the lifts, the pool, the car park, the corridors, the landscaping and the plant rooms. Somebody has to pay for all of it, and that somebody is the owner.
The charge is expressed as a rate in AED per square foot per year. Multiply that rate by the chargeable area on your title deed, and you have your annual bill. The chargeable area is not always the same as the marketing area, so check the deed rather than the brochure.
Common Cost Lines
The budget for a typical apartment tower breaks into a handful of recurring items. Security is usually the biggest single line. Cleaning, lift servicing, insurance for the building, chiller plant maintenance, pool upkeep, landscaping and the management company fee make up most of the rest.
Chiller charges deserve a note of their own. In some buildings, the cooling for common areas is inside the service charge. In others, district cooling is billed separately to each unit. Two buildings can quote a similar rate per square foot and leave you with very different total costs, purely because of how cooling is handled. Ask the question before you compare.
Sinking Fund
Part of what you pay each year does not get spent that year. It goes into a reserve, often called the sinking fund, for the big cyclical jobs. Facade repairs, lift replacements, and chiller overhauls arrive on roughly ten-year cycles and cost far more than a single year's budget can absorb.
A building with a thin reserve fund looks cheap on the annual rate. It is not cheap. It is deferring a bill that will land as a special levy, and special levies have a habit of arriving right when you want to sell.
What You Will Actually Pay
There is no single Dubai service charge figure, which is why most guides give you a useless average. What matters is the band your target community sits in, and what that band turns into once you multiply it by the size of your unit.
Rates By Type
The spread across Dubai is wide. Budget communities, villa estates and prime branded towers occupy completely different bands, and averaging them together produces a number that describes nothing.
|
Property type or area |
AED per sq ft per year |
AUD per sq ft per year |
|
Villas and townhouses |
3 to 7 |
1.15 to 2.65 |
|
Budget apartments, such as International City |
6 to 10 |
2.30 to 3.80 |
|
Mid market apartments, such as JVC, Arjan, Sports City |
11 to 16 |
4.20 to 6.10 |
|
Established apartments, such as Marina, JLT, Business Bay |
15 to 25 |
5.70 to 9.50 |
|
Prime and branded, such as Downtown and Palm Jumeirah |
25 to 35 |
9.50 to 13.30 |
Ranges reflect 2026 market reporting on Mollak registered buildings. The median across more than 1,500 registered buildings sits near AED 17 per square foot. Individual buildings sit outside these bands in both directions, and a small number of ultra-prime towers exceed AED 60.
Treat this table as a budgeting range only. The approved rate is set building by building, so verify the exact figure for your target project before you commit.
Annual Bill Examples
Rate per square foot is an abstraction until you multiply it out. Here is what it looks like as a real invoice.
Dubai Service Charges By Unit Size
|
Unit size |
At AED 12 per sq ft |
At AED 18 per sq ft |
At AED 28 per sq ft |
|
Studio, 500 sq ft |
AED 6,000 (AUD 2,280) |
AED 9,000 (AUD 3,420) |
AED 14,000 (AUD 5,320) |
|
One bed, 750 sq ft |
AED 9,000 (AUD 3,420) |
AED 13,500 (AUD 5,130) |
AED 21,000 (AUD 7,980) |
|
Two bed, 1,100 sq ft |
AED 13,200 (AUD 5,020) |
AED 19,800 (AUD 7,520) |
AED 30,800 (AUD 11,700) |
|
Three bed, 1,500 sq ft |
AED 18,000 (AUD 6,840) |
AED 27,000 (AUD 10,260) |
AED 42,000 (AUD 15,960) |
Look at the two-bedroom row. The difference between a well-run mid-market building and a prime tower is AED 17,600 a year, which is close to AUD 6,700. Over a ten-year hold, that is a second deposit.
How Charges Hit Net Yield
This is where the number stops being a maintenance cost and starts being a return problem. A yield only means something once the service charge comes out of it, and the size of that bite changes which of two apartments is actually the better buy.
Gross Versus Net
Gross yield is annual rent divided by purchase price. It is the number in every brochure, and it ignores every cost of ownership.
Net yield is what remains after service charges, management fees and vacancy. In Dubai, the gap between the two typically runs 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points. Service charges are the largest part of that gap. If you are comparing Dubai to a Melbourne investment property, comparing gross Dubai against net Melbourne will mislead you badly, and it is a mistake we see constantly. Our Dubai rental properties yield guide walks through the yield maths in more detail.
A Real Comparison
Two one-bedroom apartments, both 750 square feet, in two different parts of Dubai.
|
Line item |
JVC one bed |
Dubai Marina one bed |
|
Purchase price |
AED 950,000 (AUD 361,000) |
AED 1,900,000 (AUD 722,000) |
|
Annual rent |
AED 78,000 (AUD 29,640) |
AED 120,000 (AUD 45,600) |
|
Gross yield |
8.2 percent |
6.3 percent |
|
Service charge rate |
AED 13 per sq ft |
AED 24 per sq ft |
|
Annual service charge |
AED 9,750 (AUD 3,705) |
AED 18,000 (AUD 6,840) |
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Management fee at 5 percent of rent |
AED 3,900 |
AED 6,000 |
|
Vacancy allowance |
AED 6,240 (8 percent) |
AED 7,200 (6 percent) |
|
Net income |
AED 58,110 |
AED 88,800 |
|
Net yield |
6.1 percent |
4.7 percent |
|
Service charge as share of rent |
12.5 percent |
15.0 percent |
Prices and rents reflect 2026 market bands for these communities. Service charge rates sit inside the published ranges for each area. Yields are calculated from the figures shown.
Two things fall out of that table. Both units lose roughly two percentage points between gross and net. And in the Marina unit, the service charge alone swallows 15 cents of every rental dirham before anything else is paid.
Run this calculation before you buy, not after. If you are still deciding on a location, our guide to the best areas to invest in Dubai sets out how the communities compare on price and demand.
Checking A Building Before Buying
None of this costs you anything to check. The approved rate for any building is public, and the questions that reveal the rest of the picture are ones any honest agent should be able to answer on the spot.
The Official Index
The Dubai Land Department publishes approved service charges through its service charge index, and the service is free to use. You can reach it three ways: the Mollak system, the main DLD website, or the Dubai REST app.
The process is short. Select the project from the menu, choose the usage type and the budget year, and the approved figure appears. The Mollak public search lets you filter by master community, property group and project.
Do this before you sign, not after handover. It takes about two minutes, and it is the single most useful piece of due diligence available to an overseas buyer.
Questions To Ask
Five questions worth putting to the agent or developer in writing.
What is the RERA-approved rate for this specific building this year, not the community average? What was the rate three years ago, so you can see the trend? Is the district cooling inside the service charge or billed separately. What is the current balance of the reserve fund? Have owners been hit with any special levy in the last five years?
If an agent cannot answer these, that is information too.
Talk It Through Before You Buy
Service charges are the most under-modelled cost in Dubai property, and they are the easiest one to check before you commit. A two-minute search on the DLD index can change whether a deal makes sense.
At the Dubai Property Expo Melbourne, you can sit down with developer representatives and advisors and go through the actual approved rate for the specific building you are considering, alongside the price, the payment plan and the realistic rental figure. No brochure yields, no averages, just the numbers for your unit.
Register your interest at dubaipropertyexpomelbourne.com.au and bring your shortlist. We will run the net yield with you.
Questions Investors Ask Most
What are service charges in Dubai?
They are the annual fee owners pay to maintain the shared parts of a building or community. The money covers security, cleaning, lift servicing, insurance, landscaping, pool and plant maintenance, the management company fee, and a contribution to a reserve fund for major future works. They apply to every jointly owned property in Dubai.
How are Dubai service charges calculated?
RERA approves a rate in AED per square foot for each building each year. That rate is multiplied by the chargeable area of your unit as recorded on the title deed. A 900 square foot apartment in a building approved at AED 15 per square foot pays AED 13,500 for the year.
Who pays service charges in Dubai, the owner or the tenant?
The owner. Under Law No. 6 of 2019, the owner is liable unless the lease agreement expressly transfers the cost, and even then the owner is not discharged if the tenant fails to pay. In practice, most long-term residential leases in Dubai leave the service charge with the landlord.
How do I check the service charge for a Dubai property?
Use the Dubai Land Department service charge index, free, through the DLD website, the Mollak system or the Dubai REST app. Select the project, the usage type and the budget year to see the approved rate. Do this before signing.
Can service charges in Dubai increase every year?
Yes, but not arbitrarily. The management company must submit a proposed budget to RERA each year, supported by audited accounts for the prior year. RERA reviews and approves it before any invoice goes out. Rates cannot be raised mid-year without going through that process.
What happens if you do not pay Dubai service charges?
The account escalates through late fees and legal notices, and eventually a registration block that prevents you from selling or refinancing the property. The Owners Association can also pursue the debt through the Rental Disputes Centre. It is not a cost you can quietly defer.
Are service charges included in Dubai rental yield figures?
Usually not. Advertised yields are almost always gross, meaning rent divided by price with no costs deducted. Net yield after service charges, management and vacancy typically runs 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points lower. Always ask which number you are being shown.
Do villas in Dubai have service charges?
Yes, though generally much lower per square foot than apartments, often AED 3 to 7. Villas have fewer shared facilities. The charge covers community-level items such as road maintenance, street lighting, security patrols, parks and shared landscaping rather than lifts and lobbies.