Money

The holiday-home test

2 min readBy Ansh Virmani

Short lets in Dubai can earn 30 to 50 percent more than a lease. They can also earn less, after the cleaner, the platform, the manager and the empty Tuesdays in August. Which one you get depends on a single number that most owners never calculate before they buy the furniture: occupancy.

Gross yield ranges, 2026
Short lets win on the top line. Then the bills arrive.
Short let, gross8 to 12%
Long let, gross6 to 8%
Short let, net6 to 8%
Market ranges for apartments in guest districts. Net short-let yield is after management, cleaning, platform fees and the Tourism Dirham.

The bills a lease never sends

A furnished holiday home pays a Department of Economy and Tourism permit, a Tourism Dirham of AED 10 to 15 per night, a municipality fee, platform commissions of 3 to 5 percent, and a manager who takes 15 to 25 percent of revenue to handle keys and complaints at midnight. Utilities are yours, not the guest’s. Turnover wears out a kitchen three times faster than a family does. Add it up and roughly a third of the top line is gone before it reaches you.

Where AED 100 of short-let revenue goes
About a third leaves before you see it.
  • 66 to you
  • 20 management
  • 8 cleaning, utilities, wear
  • 6 fees and platform
Illustrative for a managed unit. Self-managed owners keep the management slice and lose their weekends.

Regulation is the part first-time hosts underestimate. A holiday home needs a Department of Economy and Tourism permit before a listing goes live, a fee of about AED 1,500 to set up and a few hundred dirhams a year per unit after that, and a fine of AED 5,000 to 200,000 for skipping it. Individual owners can now register up to eight units without a trade licence. None of it is expensive. All of it is mandatory, and the platforms check.

The test

Take your realistic nightly rate and your realistic long-let monthly rent. Short lets only beat the lease, net, when occupancy stays above about 55 percent across the year and the nightly rate is at least a tenth of the monthly rent. On a AED 90,000 lease that is about AED 750 a night, which Marina clears in January and does not in August. In Marina and Downtown the year still averages out. In a mid-market tower forty minutes from the beach it is not, and the owner is running a small hotel for a landlord’s return.

A holiday home is a business you bought by accident. Run it like one or rent it out.

What I do with it

Short let only in the districts guests search for by name, with a manager whose occupancy figures you have seen, and keep a long-let fallback plan priced in. Everywhere else, the boring lease wins, and it does not text you at 2am about the Wi-Fi.

Sources. Property Finder, holiday homes 2026 · GuestReady, holiday home licence 2026 · Calgary UAE, short vs long term 2026 · Real Estate Club Dubai, DET licence and ROI

Ansh Virmani
Ansh Virmani

I run The Virmani Group in Dubai and write here about the UAE market, the city, and the work. Every opinion is mine; Claude helps with the drafting. Thinking about property here? Talk to me first.