Dubai Mortgage Calculator: DBR, LTV and Your Monthly Payment

A Dubai bank won't ask how much you'd like to borrow. It works out how much you can afford to repay, and it does that with three numbers: DBR, LTV and tenor. Understand how they fit together and you'll know your ceiling before you call a bank. I'll follow the same order as our mortgage calculator does.

Step 1. DBR, or how much of your income the bank will let you commit

DBR (debt burden ratio) is the share of your income that goes on loan repayments, all of them added together.

The Central Bank rules (Article 3 ↗):

• the cap is 50% of gross salary and regular income from a defined, specific source;
• lenders shouldn't apply the maximum automatically, they are expected to look at the individual borrower;
• the loan is stress-tested at 2 to 4 percentage points above the current rate;
• if there's an introductory rate, the stress test uses the rate that kicks in after it ends;
• if the loan runs past retirement age, whatever is still owed at that point has to be serviceable at a 50% DBR on post-retirement income.

What the bank adds up

Every monthly credit payment:

• instalments on existing car or personal loans;
• credit cards, and here the bank looks at the limit rather than the balance. Emirates NBD, for instance, counts all EMIs plus 5% of the total limit of every card you hold (Emirates NBD ↗);
• the payment on the new mortgage.

So a card with a AED 50,000 limit and nothing owed on it still "costs" you AED 2,500 a month in the bank's eyes. Buyers lose borrowing power this way all the time.

If you're buying to let

On investment property the Central Bank requires at least two months of rental income to come off the calculation.

Step 2. Tenor

The longest mortgage term the Central Bank allows is 25 years (CBUAE ↗). How old you can be at the final repayment is up to each lender.

Commercial Bank of Dubai, for example, lists a maximum age at maturity of 65 for salaried applicants and 70 for the self-employed, with minimum monthly income of AED 12,000 and AED 30,000 respectively (CBD ↗). Other banks set their own figures.

Your tenor ends up as the lower of 25 years and the gap between the age limit and your current age. A shorter term pushes the payment up, so less loan fits inside the DBR.

Step 3. Maximum loan

DBR tells you the payment you can afford:

Available payment = income × 50% − existing instalments − 5% of card limits

The bank then runs the sum in reverse and finds the loan that produces that annuity payment at the given rate and tenor.

There's a second ceiling too. The Central Bank caps total financing at 7 or 8 times annual income, depending on the borrower category (CBUAE, Article 3 ↗). The bank goes with whichever limit is lower.

Step 4. LTV, or how much of the price the bank will fund

LTV measures the loan against the appraised value of the property (CBUAE ↗). Not the contract price.

For most of my clients these Central Bank caps apply (Article 3 ↗, Resolution 31/2/2020 ↗):

The rulebook gives a separate borrower category higher caps, which you can find in the Article 3 text. Banks can always be stricter than the regulator, and they have their own rules for non-residents. I cover those in Dubai mortgages for non-residents.

From there, maximum property price = maximum loan ÷ LTV.

A full worked example

These figures are illustrative. The 4.5% rate is for the arithmetic, not a bank quote.

Inputs:

• income of AED 40,000 a month;
• a car loan at AED 3,000 a month;
• one credit card with a AED 50,000 limit;
• first home, owner-occupied, resale, 25-year term.

Compare the two loan lines. The stress test takes almost AED 460,000 off the amount, which is why calculators that leave it out promise more than banks end up approving. The exact add-on within the 2–4 point range is the bank's call.

Say the bank approves about AED 2.1m at 80% LTV. That points to a price of roughly AED 2.68m. Without the card, the available payment would be AED 2,500 higher and the loan noticeably bigger.

Step 5. Cash you'll need upfront

The deposit is only part of it. Everything below comes from DLD and bank pages.

Here's how that looks on a resale flat at AED 2,000,000 with an 80% loan (AED 1,600,000):

• your own contribution, AED 400,000;
• DLD 4%, AED 80,000;
• mortgage registration, about AED 4,270;
• registrar fee, AED 4,200;
• valuation, AED 3,150;
• bank processing fee, AED 16,800;
• agency commission, AED 42,000.

That adds up to about AED 550,000 upfront, roughly 27.5% of the price rather than the 20% deposit alone. Calculator 2 on the calculator page breaks this down for your own price, and I go through each line in Dubai property purchase costs.

How the monthly payment is worked out

UAE mortgages are repaid on a reducing balance, at least quarterly. In practice everyone pays monthly (CBUAE ↗).

The formula is P = L × r ÷ (1 − (1 + r)^−n), where L is the loan, r the monthly rate and n the number of months.

On illustrative numbers, AED 1,600,000 over 25 years comes to about AED 8,900 a month at 4.5% and about AED 10,800 at 6.5%. Two points of interest add almost AED 1,900 to every monthly payment.

One more Central Bank rule: you can't count an end-of-service benefit as the source of repayment.

How to get a bigger approval

• Cancel cards you don't need, or bring the limits down. At banks that count 5%, every AED 10,000 of limit eats AED 500 of payment capacity.
• Pay off small loans before you apply.
• Add a co-borrower where the bank allows it.
• Document all of your income. Regular income from a defined source counts, including rent and business income, as long as you can prove it.
• Look past the introductory rate. The stress test is run on the rate that follows it.

From my practice. When I took my own mortgage with Commercial Bank of Dubai in December 2025, I went through exactly this sequence: income, commitments, stress test, then upfront costs. I start there with clients too. On one Peninsula Four deal in Business Bay, a bank had already turned the client down. Together with trusted mortgage broker partners we went through his company documents and got him approved at 70% LTV.

Mistakes I see when people do the sums themselves

Using net salary. The Central Bank talks about gross salary and regular income from a defined source. But the bank only counts what you can document.

Forgetting the cards. A high-limit card you never touch can knock hundreds of thousands of dirhams off the loan.

Using the advertised rate. The bank checks DBR at the stress rate, which is higher.

Working LTV off the price. It's based on the bank's valuation, and if that comes in lower, your deposit goes up.

Ignoring age. Not everyone gets 25 years. The term is limited by your age when the loan ends.

Leaving out upfront costs. On resale they add a serious sum to the deposit, as the example above shows.

What a calculator can't see

It can't see your AECB credit history. It doesn't know how the bank will value the property, and valuations can come in below the price (see low bank valuation). Nor does it know a bank's internal limits by employer, industry or income type.

So take the result as a guide. The bank sets final terms after reviewing your documents.

Run your own numbers

Open the "How much can I borrow" calculator and put in your figures. If the result raises questions, or a bank has already said no, try the mortgage navigator or message me on WhatsApp and we'll go through the calculation together.