Dubai Rental Yields by Area 2026: 14 Areas From Ejari and DLD Data

Gross rent to price across Dubai apartment districts runs from 4.9 per cent on Palm Jumeirah to 9.3 per cent in Al Warsan First, per Ejari contract data and DLD resale registrations for the 12 months to 23 August 2026. The middle of the market, meaning Business Bay, Al Barsha South Fourth and Jabal Ali First, sits between 6.6 and 7.5 per cent.

That range is narrower than the unsourced figures that circulate in agency content, and the ordering is different. The highest gross figures are in the cheapest districts, not the most marketed ones, and every point above roughly 7.5 per cent is being paid to you for taking a tenant-quality and stock-quality risk that the ratio does not show.

Rent side: registered Ejari contracts starting between 1 September 2025 and 23 August 2026, residential apartments only, annual amount between AED 15,000 and AED 1,500,000, floor area between 20 and 400 square metres. Labour accommodation and staff housing categories are excluded.

Price side: DLD sale registrations over the same window, residential flats, completed stock only. Off-plan registrations are excluded, because a launch price for a 2028 handover cannot be divided by a 2026 rent without producing a meaningless number. That exclusion alone is why these figures differ from most published tables.

Two independent ratios are shown for every area. The median basis divides the median annual rent by the median ready resale price. The per-square-foot basis divides median rent per square foot by median price per square foot, which removes any difference in unit-size mix between the two samples. Where the two columns agree, the figure is robust. Where they diverge, the samples differ in mix and the area needs a closer look.

Areas qualify only with at least 250 completed resale registrations and 800 Ejari contracts in the window. Fourteen areas cleared both thresholds, covering 8,938 sales and 121,966 contracts. Every number here is an area-level aggregate over many transactions. No figure describes an individual property, and none should be applied to one.

Al Merkadh is the clearest example of why the second ratio matters: 5.7 per cent on the median basis against 7.1 per cent per square foot, a gap of 1.4 points that says the units being sold there are larger than the units being let. Al Warsan First and Business Bay and Palm Jumeirah, at the other extreme, agree to within 0.2 points on both bases, so those three figures can be relied on.

Pooling the fourteen areas and splitting by bedroom count gives the cleanest signal in the whole exercise, because the median let size and median sale size line up within 6 per cent on every row.

Gross cover falls almost two full points from studio to three-bedroom. Studios at 7.3 per cent and one-bedrooms at 6.4 per cent are where the income is; three-bedrooms at 5.4 per cent are priced by owner-occupier demand, not by rent. This is the strongest single argument for the sub-AED-2.5M segment covered in best Dubai apartments under AED 2.5M.

Al Warsan First shows 9.3 per cent on a median ready price of AED 410,000 and a median rent of AED 38,280. Both numbers are real and both are supported by large samples. What the ratio does not show is tenant turnover, arrears risk, building condition, or the depth of the resale market when you want out.

The same logic applies down the table. Nadd Hessa at 7.5 per cent rests on 275 resale registrations, which is a thin sale-side sample next to Business Bay's 2,043. Al Hebiah Fourth at 7.4 per cent rests on 261. A high ratio computed on a small sale sample is a hypothesis, not a fact.

Rent direction matters too. Median new-lease rents on studios and one-bedrooms are lower for contracts starting in 2026 than for those starting in 2025, so these ratios are being computed against a rent line that has stopped rising. The full series is in is Dubai property a good investment in 2026.

Every figure above is gross. To get to a net number, subtract annual service charges, which vary by building and are the single largest deduction; letting and management fees; maintenance; and any void between tenancies. Service charges are the largest of these and vary widely by building, so two units showing the same gross figure can produce very different net income.

Acquisition costs sit outside the ratio as well. The 4 per cent DLD transfer fee plus trustee charges are paid on entry and are not in any of the prices above. See gross rental yield and net rental yield for the distinction, and Ejari for what the rent registrations are.

The practical rule: use these area figures to shortlist and to sanity-check a broker's claim, never to underwrite a specific unit. Building-level and unit-level variance inside any of these areas is wider than the variance between them.

Oliva is a buyer-side RERA brokerage (BRN 1573501, DLD office card 92025). On off-plan the developer pays the commission, so buyer-side advice costs the buyer nothing; a 2% fee plus 5% VAT applies only to resale and secondary purchases, with the AED 5,000 retainer subtracted at transfer, so there is nothing to credit and nothing to double pay. The next step is a free underwriting report on any unit you shortlist: the output is a verdict, and do-not-buy is a real outcome. Get the verdict, or start from the inventory in projects in Business Bay.