Service Charges Are the Cost Most Buyers Check Last
Service charges are billed per square foot per year, set by each building’s owners association under RERA oversight, and they vary widely between buildings in the same community. Two apartments at the same asking price can differ by tens of thousands of dirhams a year to hold. The figure you need is the schedule for the specific building, not a community average.
Why the range is so wide
A service charge pays for what the building shares: maintenance, security, insurance, the reserve fund for major works, and cooling where it is centralised. A branded tower with concierge staffing, extensive amenities and district cooling costs far more per square foot to run than a villa community whose shared cost is landscaping and access roads.
Across Dubai the practical range runs from a few dirhams per square foot in villa communities to the high twenties or thirties in premium and branded towers. That spread is not a market inefficiency. It is different buildings doing genuinely different amounts of work.
What it does to a comparison
Take two apartments of the same size at the same price, one in a branded tower and one in a mid-market building. The holding cost difference compounds every year you own it, and over a long hold it can outweigh a lower purchase price entirely.
It changes yield too. Gross yield ignores service charges by definition. Net yield does not, and net is the number you actually live with. A building with a strong gross yield and a heavy service charge can end up behind one that looked worse on the headline figure.
The document to ask for
Ask for the current service charge schedule for the specific building, approved by RERA. Not the marketing figure, not the community average, and not last year’s if a new one has been issued.
Check whether cooling is inside that figure or billed separately, because district cooling is a meaningful annual cost on its own and is easy to miss when comparing two buildings that quote it differently.
A reasonable way to use the number
Multiply the rate by the unit size to get the annual figure, then treat it as a fixed cost of ownership rather than a footnote. If you are buying to let, subtract it before you compare anything. If you are buying to live in, it is part of the monthly cost of the home in the same way a mortgage payment is.
Buyers who check it last are usually the ones surprised by it later.
Want this applied to a specific property? An advisor can run the numbers with you.
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