What you are paying for
Service charges fund the owners association: common area maintenance, chillers, insurance, reserve fund and management. They are set per square foot and approved annually. They are the owner's cost, not the tenant's.
The range, and why comparisons mislead
Across the stock we currently list, published service charges run from AED 9 per sq.ft in low-density villa communities to AED 34 in branded buildings with extensive amenity. Every figure in that range is on a listing page you can open. But the headline is not comparable across buildings until you check what it includes: a tower where cooling is inside the service charge will look expensive next to one where the chiller is billed separately, right up until you add the chiller bill back in. Every listing on this site states which arrangement applies, in the property details table.
Reserve fund health
Ask for the owners association budget and the reserve fund balance. A building with an underfunded reserve will issue a special levy eventually, and you will be the owner when it does.
How it hits yield
Model it. A 7% gross yield in a building charging AED 28 per sq.ft is not a 7% investment, on a 1,000 sq.ft apartment that charge alone is AED 28,000 a year off the top.
Market commentary, not advice. Where a figure here comes from our own listings or launches it is linked to the page that holds it, so you can check it. Anything describing the wider market is our reading of it at the time of writing, 5 Aug 2026, and we will not pretend it is a published statistic.
