Holiday home calculator.

It can be, but the nightly rates you see on listings make it look easier than it is. Out of a short let you pay the operator 15 to 25% of revenue, the 7% municipality fee and the tourism dirham, and you furnish the place. The utilities, internet and cleaning are yours too, where a long tenant would have paid them. On a typical one-bedroom under about 70% occupancy, the long lease tends to win on money and on effort.

You do. If you offer a home for stays under six months, you need a holiday home permit from the Department of Economy and Tourism (the DET took over from what used to be the DTCM). Operating without one costs you AED 5,000 for a first fine, double that for a repeat inside twelve months, and it can go up to AED 100,000.

Applying costs about AED 1,520. After that you renew each year at roughly AED 370 per bedroom. On top of the permit there's the tourism dirham, which you collect from guests at AED 10 to 20 per bedroom per night depending on how the unit is classified, plus a 7% municipality fee on what you earn from short lets. These figures move from time to time, so check them with the DET before you apply.

The guest does, on paper. You collect it with the booking. In practice a guest only pays so much for a night, and every dirham of tax is a dirham you can't charge in rent, so the calculator takes it off your figures anyway. The municipality fee and the operator's cut come straight out of revenue.

Plenty of buildings do. If the community rules ban short lets, set by the owners association or building management, being the owner doesn't get you round it. Tenants need the landlord's written permission as well. So before you buy a single sofa, ask building management whether it's allowed.

A single booking can run to 90 days. Past six months you're no longer running a holiday home at all. It's a tenancy, it goes on Ejari, and your guest gets a tenant's protections.

A well-run unit in a good spot usually does somewhere between 60 and 80% over a full year, and most of that comes in winter. You might be 90% booked from November to March and then 35% through the summer, while the permit, the air conditioning and the operator's fee keep running. Put in a twelve-month average you'd be happy to defend, since a December figure will only flatter you.

Air conditioning is the classic one. A Dubai summer is expensive to cool even when nobody's staying. Owners also forget the laundry after every checkout, and how quickly a sofa wears when someone new sits on it every few nights. Count the cooling and laundry as running costs, and put the furniture under furnishing, spread across however many years you think it'll last.

Doing it yourself keeps the operator's fee in your pocket, which is around AED 36,000 if the unit brings in AED 180,000. What you give up is your evenings. At 70% occupancy there's a check-in every few nights, so you're arranging a clean, handing over keys, answering guests and replying to a review over and over. With a long lease there's one contract, one Ejari registration and a year of cheques.

Only when the gap is big, your building allows it and you've found an operator you'd trust with the keys. If the calculator shows the two options a few thousand dirhams apart, take the long lease, whose rent can still rise over the years under Decree 43. Bear in mind who publishes most of these comparisons. Holiday home managers rarely put a value on the owner's time.

No. A short let may bring in more money and still return less, because you spent more furnishing it and it wears out sooner. Before deciding, put both versions through the rental yield calculator using the same property value.