The statutory fees, what they are charged on, and the two costs nobody can quote you in advance
Most cost breakdowns for Dubai property are approximately right, which is another way of saying they are wrong in the direction that suits whoever wrote them. The statutory fees are published. There is no reason to estimate them.
That is the complete statutory list. Everything else you may be charged is commercial, not legal.
Take a purchase at AED 1,500,000, financed with a loan of AED 1,200,000.
Statutory total: AED 68,070. That is 4.54% of the purchase price, and it is due at transfer, in cash, on top of your deposit.
The same purchase in cash, with no loan, comes to AED 64,780, and you drop the mortgage registration line entirely.
Valuation fees and bank arrangement fees are real, and you will pay them on a financed purchase. They are set by each bank as commercial terms, not by statute.
We do not publish a figure for them, anywhere on this site, because we would be inventing one. Ask your lender for both in writing before you commit. A bank that will not put an arrangement fee in writing is telling you something.
A fee set by law can be published. A fee set by a bank has to be asked for. Anyone quoting you a precise, confident number for the second kind made it up.
Agency commission, where it applies, is a commercial arrangement between the parties. Service charges are ongoing, not a purchase cost, and vary by building. Neither is statutory, and neither belongs in a transfer-day calculation.
There is no property tax, no capital gains tax and no income tax on rental income for individuals in the UAE. This is genuinely unusual and it is one of the reasons the 4% transfer fee is easier to absorb than it looks in isolation.
Source: fees as published by the Dubai Land Department, held in the codebase as constants rather than as prose so a figure on this site can be traced to the regulation. Percentages ride on the price; the flat amounts are AED. Verify current rates with the DLD before transacting.