How every figure is computed

Definitions

Recorded price

The recorded price is the median price per square foot of registered sales in the most recent window that holds at least five of them — the last 3 months, else the last 6, else the last 12. It stops there. Past a year the honest answer is that the building has not traded enough recently, not an older number presented as a current one.

Ready units only. A buyer comparing what to pay for a finished apartment is not helped by a launch price agreed years ago on a payment plan, so off-plan sales are excluded here — unlike the gross yield denominator, which pools both because a yield needs the broadest price base it can defend.

Five sales is the floor everywhere on this site. A price computed from two sales moves by a third when one penthouse trades, and publishing that as guidance would be the most damaging thing this index could do.

It is a median across the units that happened to trade, not a valuation of any particular apartment. Floor, view, condition and layout all move a real price and none of them is in this figure. Multiplying it by your own unit's size gives you a comparison, not an appraisal.

Gross yield

Gross yield divides the median annual rent from new registered contracts by the median resale price for the same building and bedroom type, over the trailing 24 months.

The price leg uses the median of the last 3 months of sales, or of the last 5 sales where the last 3 months hold fewer than three — so the denominator tracks what the building sells for now, not its long-run average. Off-plan sales are included in price and trend figures but excluded from the yield denominator.

“Gross” means before every cost: service charge, agency fees, maintenance and vacant months all come out of it in practice.

Yield spread

Yield spread is the building's gross yield minus the median gross yield of its area for the same bedroom type, in percentage points.

Points, never percent: “1.4 points above the area” is a different statement from “20% above the area”, and only the first is what this measures. The spread is not shown where the building's own yield is suppressed — a spread quoted against a broken denominator would inherit the problem.

Turnover upside

Turnover upside compares the median rent on new registered contracts against the median on renewals in the same building, over the same 24-month window.

Renewal increases are capped by the RERA index, so a building's renewals drift below its open-market rent; the gap is what a landlord gains when a unit turns over — and what a sitting tenant saves by staying. It is only shown where the gap is material (at least 2%), because Dubai rents cluster on round numbers and tiny gaps are noise.

Short-let premium

The premium divides modelled net short-let revenue (nightly rate × 365 × assumed occupancy, minus platform fee, cleaning and utilities) by the median registered long-let rent for the same building and bedroom type.

Above 1×, the nightly let earns more than the lease; below 1× it earns less. Rankings and hub medians exclude rows below 1×, so those figures describe buildings where short-letting beats the lease — not all buildings.

Nightly rate per sqft

Nightly rate per square foot divides the median nightly rate by the unit's measured floor area (derived from the building's own sales where possible, else the Dubai median area for that bedroom count).

It exists for comparison: absolute nightly rates mostly measure unit size, and per-sqft strips that out.

Net short-let revenue

From the nightly rate a guest sees, net revenue deducts the platform fee, then cleaning (2 turnovers a month) and utilities, both scaled to the unit's measured floor area.

Service charge and mortgage are deliberately not deducted: neither comes out of the long-let rent it sits beside, and a service charge is owed whichever way the unit is let, so removing it from one side only would break the comparison. Neither figure is net of income tax or furnishing.

Occupancy assumption

No Dubai source publishes per-building occupancy — the Land Department registers contracts, not nights — so annual short-let figures are modelled at a single stated 80% occupancy.

It is one constant rather than a per-building estimate precisely so a reader can substitute their own: revenue and yield scale linearly with it. 80% is an operator-grade figure for well-run stock; the citywide average runs lower, and summer runs well below it.

Management fee

The cost model charges no management fee, matching a self-managed unit. Professional short-let management in Dubai typically charges 15–25% of revenue after the platform fee; applying it lowers every net figure and yield on the site proportionally.

500m rows

Airbnb publishes approximate coordinates, so even the tightest set — listings within 50 metres — is the building and its immediate neighbours. Where that set is too small to measure a bedroom type, the row widens to the surrounding 500-metre cluster and is marked “500m”.

Ejari

Ejari is the Dubai government registry where every tenancy contract must be filed. Rents on this site come from those registered contracts, which makes them agreed prices rather than listings — and lets new contracts be separated from renewals, which is what the turnover-upside metric measures.

Off-plan return

Off-plan means buying from the developer before the building is complete. The return compares the median off-plan sale price against the median price the same building resells at today, across its full history — deliberately not the 24-month window used elsewhere, since launches mostly predate it.

A building whose off-plan units never resold cannot appear, so these lists skew toward buildings that performed.

Median of registered records

Prices and rents on this site are medians of registered records: Dubai Land Department sale transactions and Ejari rental contracts. Asking prices on listing portals run above what transacts and include stock that never sells; registered records are what was actually paid.

Gross payback

Gross payback is 100 divided by the gross yield: a 7% yield pays the price back in roughly 14 years of rent, before any costs, void periods or price movement. It is a way to feel the size of a yield, not a projection.

Break-even occupancy

Break-even occupancy inverts the short-let cost model against the building's registered long-let rent: the share of nights that must be booked for the nightly let to match the lease, after platform fee, cleaning and utilities.

Cleaning is modelled as a fixed monthly cost, so the figure is approximate — read it as a threshold, not a precise operating target. Where the answer exceeds 100%, no figure is shown: the lease wins at any occupancy.

Villa community

A villa has no building in the Land Department's transaction records: measured on the 2026-08 export, `building_name_en` is blank on every one of 186,128 villa sales. What the records do carry is the master project (73.9% of sales), and that is the name people search. So villa figures are published per community, keyed on the same locality table the apartment area hubs use, with the community's name taken from the property portals that rank for it and the Land Department's own registration kept as an alias.

Where the Land Department leaves the community blank, the project name usually carries a launch phase — "DAMAC ISLANDS 2 - BAHAMAS 1" — and a curated fold table maps those phases to the community they belong to. Emirates Living is one registration carrying three places: its Springs phases publish as The Springs, its Emirates Hills project as Emirates Hills, and the residual — larger plots at a higher price — as The Meadows.

A community publishes once it holds 20 registered sales (or, for the rent page, 20 new contracts) in the trailing 24 months, four times the tower's floor: five sales spread across a thousand-villa community are not evidence about that community. The headline row counts every registered record, including the 14–18% of recent villa sales filed without a bedroom count; the per-bedroom rows count only those with one, so they never sum to the headline, and every page says so.

Title type (apartment or villa)

The apartment index is every record the Land Department types as `Unit` and Ejari types as `Flat`. The villa index is every record typed `Villa`, plus Ejari's `Complex Villas` label for villas inside a managed compound. Nothing is classified on its name, and no record is in both.

The split follows the title because that is the only classification the register itself makes, and it is the one that governs what a buyer actually acquires. It also decides the grain each index can publish at: a unit title names a building, so apartments publish per building; a villa title names a plot, so villas publish per community.

Townhouses fall on both sides. A plot-titled townhouse sits inside its community's villa figures. A stacked or strata-titled townhouse is registered as a unit and appears in the apartment index under its own name — which is why the Dubai South apartment tables carry rows called "The Pulse Townhouses Cluster 35" and "Urbana III Stacked House". Measured on the 2026-08 Ejari export, contracts in townhouse- or stacked-house-named projects split 9,891 filed as Villa against 929 filed as Flat: the second group is real apartment-index stock, not a mapping error.

Read a row from the index it appears in, and carry the title type with the figure. Do not reclassify a row by reading its name, and do not treat a townhouse-named row in an apartment table as evidence the index is wrong about it.

Rent grain (villas)

Ejari villa contracts name their community less often than sales do — 49% carry a master project, and the 58,891 leases filed as "Complex Villas" almost never do. So villa rent is attributed in three rungs and each page states which one its yield rests on. `community`: the contract's registration resolves to this community. `project`: the registration has no community but its project name does, through the same fold table the sales use. `vicinity`: contracts across the community's Land Department area, pooled in only where the first two rungs hold fewer than 20 new contracts, and deduplicated against them.

The label is decided by majority: a community whose 24-month new contracts are mostly pooled is labelled `vicinity`, and its yield should be read as the area's rather than the community's. Measured on the 2026-08 export, 90 of the 125 sale-eligible community rows rest on their own contracts, 9 on project-name matches and 23 on the area.

Model constants

The short-let cost model runs on a handful of stated constants. They are listed here with their live values — the page reads them from the model itself, so it cannot drift from what the site computes.

Assumed occupancy

Share of nights assumed booked when a nightly rate is annualised — an assumption, not a measurement; revenue scales linearly with it.

80%

Platform fee

Airbnb's share of the guest-facing booking price, deducted before any other cost.

15.5%

Management fee

The model assumes a self-managed unit; professional management typically takes 15–25% of revenue after the platform fee.

0%

Cleanings per month

Turnover cleans charged per month, fixed regardless of occupancy.

2

Cleaning fee

Reference cost for a one-bedroom, scaled to each unit's measured floor area.

AED 200 per clean

Utilities

Reference cost for a one-bedroom, scaled to each unit's measured floor area.

AED 700 per month

Turnover-upside floor

Minimum new-vs-renewal gap shown; Dubai rents cluster on round numbers, so smaller gaps are noise.

2%

Questions

What does “Recorded price” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

What this building actually traded at recently: the median price per sqft of the freshest window holding at least five registered sales of ready units. The window is always stated, because a price without one is not evidence.

What does “Gross yield” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

A year of rent as a share of the purchase price, before any costs. AED 70,000 rent on an AED 1M apartment is a 7% gross yield.

What does “Yield spread” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

How far this building's yield sits above or below its area's median for the same unit type, in percentage points. Above zero earns more than the typical neighbour.

What does “Turnover upside” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

How much more a new tenant pays than a sitting tenant renewing in the same building. Renewal rents are capped by RERA, so sitting tenants usually pay below market.

What does “Short-let premium” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

How many times over a nightly let out-earns the same unit's registered lease, after short-let costs. 1.5× means fifty percent more than renting it out long-term.

What does “Nightly rate per sqft” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

The nightly rate divided by the unit's floor area — so a studio and a three-bed can be compared on price, not size.

What does “Net short-let revenue” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

What reaches the owner after the platform's cut, cleaning and utilities — but before service charge, mortgage, tax and furnishing.

What does “Occupancy assumption” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

Annual short-let figures assume 80% of nights are booked. That is an assumption, not a measurement — at half the occupancy, halve the revenue and the yield.

What does “Management fee” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

Short-let figures assume a self-managed unit (0% management fee). A managed unit typically gives up 15–25% of revenue, lowering every yield shown.

What does “500m rows” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

Measured across the surrounding 500-metre cluster, because this building alone had too few listings of that type. Unmarked rows use listings within 50 metres.

What does “Ejari” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

Dubai's mandatory rental-contract registry. Every rent on this site is a registered Ejari contract — a price actually agreed, not an asking price.

What does “Off-plan return” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

What buyers who purchased before construction (off-plan) made when those units later resold. Only buildings whose units actually resold can appear.

What does “Median of registered records” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

Every figure is the median of prices actually registered with the Land Department — not asking prices, which run higher and often never transact.

What does “Gross payback” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

Years of gross rent needed to recover the purchase price: 100 ÷ yield. Ignores all costs, growth and vacancies — a rough length-of-bet, not a forecast.

What does “Break-even occupancy” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

The occupancy at which net short-let income equals the registered long-let rent. Below it, the lease pays more; above it, the nightly let does.

What does “Villa community” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

The grain every villa figure is published at. The Land Department records no building for a villa, so a community — Arabian Ranches, The Springs, The Valley — is the finest place a registered sale or lease can be attributed to.

What does “Title type (apartment or villa)” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

Which of the two indexes a record belongs to is decided by its title type in the register — Unit and Flat are the apartment index, Villa and Complex Villas the villa index — never by what the development is called. A strata-titled townhouse is an apartment-index row.

What does “Rent grain (villas)” mean on Dubai Wealth Index?

Which contracts a villa community's rent came from: its own (community), contracts matched to it by project name (project), or contracts pooled from the surrounding Land Department area because it has too few of its own (vicinity).