Ahmadreza SamadiSame rent, different service-charge bill
A fictional Dubai property comparison separates advertised rent from cash remaining after one recurring cost.
English film with synthetic narration and English captions. Rami, the apartments, lobbies and all example amounts are fictional. Original animation, not footage of a real property or a market-rate lookup.
Read the English film transcript
Two apartments. The same advertised rent: 80,000 dirhams a year. Rami is thinking of buying one to rent out. He assumes the same rent means the same income. Then the building bills arrive. In Dubai, the owner pays the service charges, not the tenant. In
this fictional example, one apartment has 12,000 dirhams a year in service charges. The other has 20,000. Subtract just that one cost. 80,000 minus 12,000 leaves 68,000. 80,000 minus 20,000 leaves 60,000. Same rent, but 8,000 dirhams apart. And that’s before vacancy, repairs, financing and
every other cost. So neither number is profit. It’s only what’s left after one bill. Service charges pay for running the shared building: things like security, cleaning, maintenance, shared utilities, insurance and reserves. In Dubai, they’re approved by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency, and they
differ from one project to another. The Dubai Land Department says an owner’s share is based on the unit’s area in the title deed, using the approved rate from its service charge index. The index asks for the community, the project, the type of use
and the budget year. So check the figures for the right building and the right year. Don’t copy a rate from another building and assume it’s yours. Before you compare deals, put the same rent assumption, the approved building charges and your other regular costs
side by side. A beautiful lobby can be worth it. Its bill still belongs in the comparison. Ahmadreza Samadi. More at a-samadi.com