Business Bay Metro Station: AED 105,000 median rent across 5,899 registered contracts

The median registered rent near Business Bay Metro Station is AED 105,000 a year. The Dubai median for the same filter is AED 63,000. Tenants around this station pay well above the city line, and they have paid it across 5,899 registered contracts in the last 18 months. If you are buying one apartment here to rent out, that gap is the case for the purchase. The spread underneath it is the risk.

Every rent figure below comes from registered Ejari contracts covering the last 18 months. These are rents a tenant signed and a landlord collected. They are not asking rents, not portal listings, and not what a building supposedly achieves according to the person selling you the unit.

| Measure | Value |

| Registered rent contracts near the station, last 18 months | 5,899 |

| Median annual rent | AED 105,000 |

| 25th percentile | AED 80,000 |

| 75th percentile | AED 140,000 |

| Dubai median annual rent, same filter | AED 63,000 |

| Contracts behind the Dubai median | 174,794 |

The median is one point. Your unit is a different point, and the two are rarely the same. A quarter of contracts near this station were signed at or below AED 80,000. A quarter were signed at or above AED 140,000. Half the market sits between those two numbers, and your apartment will sit somewhere in that band whether you planned for it or not.

Use the bottom of the band when you run your own arithmetic. If the purchase only works at AED 140,000, you are underwriting a top quarter outcome before you own anything. If it still works at AED 80,000, everything above that is upside you did not need.

AED 105,000 against a city median of AED 63,000, and the city figure rests on 174,794 contracts, so the comparison is not thin. The premium around this station is real and it is registered.

What the data does not do is explain itself. The cut counts every registered contract near the station whatever the size, tower, floor, building age or fit-out. A large serviced two bedroom and a compact studio in an older block each count once. So the premium belongs to the area, not automatically to the unit an agent is walking you through. Closing that gap is the buyer's job, building by building.

You cannot read a return off this page, and nobody honest can. A yield needs two numbers. One is the rent, which is here. The other is the price you pay for a specific apartment, which is not. Two units on the same floor of the same tower, earning identical rent, return very different numbers depending on what each buyer paid.

Then subtract what the rent has to carry. Service charges differ building to building. Vacancy between tenants is real time with no income. Agency fees and maintenance are real money. An annual contract value is the top line, not the amount that reaches your account.

Depth in the rental register matters for the same reason depth in the sales register does. Thousands of signed contracts over 18 months means a repeating, working pattern of demand rather than a handful of deals you would be trying to copy. When your tenant leaves, the question becomes what the next contract prices at, not whether a next tenant exists at all. That is a materially calmer position than owning in a place where the register is quiet.

The band here is wide. From AED 80,000 at the 25th percentile to AED 140,000 at the 75th, unit quality and unit size drive far more of your outcome than the address does. Buying near Business Bay Metro Station is not a strategy on its own.

Before you pay a deposit, get answers to these:

• What is the current registered Ejari contract on this exact unit, and where does it sit in the band above?
• What did the previous contract on the unit run at, and did the renewal move up or down?
• What is the service charge per square foot in this building this year?
• How many units in the tower are listed for rent right now, competing with yours?
• Is the unit furnished, and is the quoted rent a furnished rent?

If the seller cannot produce the current Ejari contract, treat the quoted rent as an opinion.

Oliva is a Dubai brokerage with no paid placements. Send us the specific unit you are considering, the tower, the floor, the size and the asking price, and we will underwrite it against the registered record for free. We will tell you where its likely rent falls inside the band above, what the service charge does to it, and what a realistic sale looks like later. Sometimes the answer is that the unit is priced fairly and the numbers hold. Sometimes the answer is do not buy this one, and we will say that plainly.