The WOW Tower 7% guaranteed return, October 2026: how the office lease works, and how 7% compares with real yields

A guaranteed return is only as good as the document behind it and the company paying it. This is Part 7 of my guide to The WOW Tower: how the 7% on the offices is built, who pays it, what "net" covers, which conditions to read before signing, and how 7% compares with what property in DLRC and Dubai Silicon Oasis actually earns.

The short version

• The guarantee applies to the commercial offices only. The apartments carry no guaranteed return.
• It is a lease: you agree when you buy to let your office for 10 years at a fixed rent per square foot, and the formal lease is signed and registered in Ejari at handover.
• On a Dh2.7M office, 7% is Dh189,000 a year, Dh15,750 a month, about Dh149 per sq ft.
• Offices in Dubai Silicon Oasis let for a median Dh90 per sq ft a year this quarter. The guarantee pays well above today's market, which is its value and also the question for year 11.
• It is optional. You can sign it, or keep the office for your own business, or let it yourself.

How the 7% guarantee on the offices works

The guarantee is not a promise in a brochure. It is a lease, and that matters, because the developer's sale contract says marketing material and revenue projections form no part of the deal. Only what is in a signed document counts. The developer's own published answer on guaranteed returns says the same.

From the developer's lease documents, in general terms:

• With the purchase, you sign an agreement to lease the office for 10 years. It binds both sides from the start.
• At handover the formal lease is signed and registered with Ejari, Dubai's tenancy register, on the terms already agreed.
• The rent is a fixed amount per square foot for the full 10 years, with no increases or reviews. It is applied to the office's final area as measured at handover.
• The rent starts after a short rent-free period that lets the tenant fit the office out, and it is paid monthly.
• The tenant may sublet the space, run it as serviced offices or co-working, or appoint a manager to do so.
• If you sell the office, the lease goes with it. A buyer takes over the income and the obligations.

The rent per square foot behind the 7% is set in each buyer's documents, so it matches the price of that office.

Who pays the 7%

The tenant named in the lease pays the rent. A guarantee is only as strong as the company that pays it, so the tenant is the first thing to check, before the rate.

What I would ask before signing:

• The name and trade licence of the tenant company on the lease.
• Whether any parent company stands behind the tenant's obligations.
• How the monthly rent reaches you, by transfer or by cheque.

What "net" covers, and what it may not

"Net" means the 7% arrives in your account after the costs that fall on an owner. Here is who carries each one.

The service charge is the cost that usually turns a headline return into a smaller one, and here it does not: the 7% is net of it, so on a Dh2.7M office the owner receives Dh189,000 a year and pays nothing else for the building. Make sure your signed documents say the same.

VAT deserves a word too. Office rent is a standard-rated supply at 5%. An owner who registers for VAT charges it on the rent and can usually reclaim the VAT paid on the purchase. For a UAE resident, registration becomes possible above Dh187,500 of taxable supplies a year and compulsory above Dh375,000, under the Federal Tax Authority's rules, so Dh189,000 of rent sits just above the voluntary threshold; owners who live abroad follow different rules. Whether registering suits you is a question for a tax adviser, not for this article.

Conditions to read in the lease and the SPA

• The start of the rent: the date the rent-free period ends, and what happens if handover is delayed.
• The area: the rent is recalculated on the area at handover, which can differ from the contract area within the SPA's tolerance.
• Leaving early: the owner can exit, but the cost is at least one year's rent and can be more in some cases.
• After year 10: the tenant has the option to renew, with the rent agreed between you at that time. What market rent might be by then is in Part 8.
• Force majeure: what lets either side walk away, and after how long.

How 7% compares with actual DLRC and Silicon Oasis yields

Market yields below come from DLD records for the 90 days to 7 October 2026: the median rent of new tenancy contracts against the median sale price for the same type.

Read the table in two directions. Against older stock, 7% net on a new office is not a high number: an office in a 2010-era Silicon Oasis tower bought at today's resale price earns more on paper. Against what a new office would earn if you let it yourself at today's rents, it is very high: Dh90 a sq ft on an entry suite of about 1,269 sq ft is Dh114,000 a year, or Dh101,000 after the service charge, a net yield of 3.75% at the WOW Tower price. The guarantee adds about Dh88,000 a year to that.

That gap is the honest summary of the offer. You are paying a new-building price, and the developer is paying you an above-market rent for ten years to close the difference. Over the full term the guarantee pays Dh1,890,000, 70% of the office's price.

Apartments: no guarantee

The WOW Tower's homes are let at market rents, by you or by a manager you choose. At their starting prices and DLRC's median rents they yield 4% to 5% gross, as Part 3 shows, and more if the building achieves the rents of DLRC's best towers. That makes the apartments a different investment from the offices: lower income at first, no counterparty to rely on, and full control.

My view

I like this guarantee for one kind of buyer: someone who wants a clean, contracted income in dirhams for ten years without managing a tenant, and who is comfortable with the company named as the tenant. For that buyer the numbers work. For a buyer who wants the highest possible value in year 11, the guarantee matters less than the building and the rent the office can command on its own, which is why the office itself, the floor and the size, still has to be chosen with care. Because the guarantee is optional, you can also keep the office for your own company, which is the subject of Part 9. The full series is in the WOW Tower investor guide.

Sources and dates

• 7% net of the service charge, for 10 years, on offices only, optional, rent paid monthly: the developer's October 2026 terms.
• Lease structure (agreement now, formal lease and Ejari at handover, fixed rent per sq ft, rent on the final area, rent-free fit-out period, subletting, transfer on sale, owner's exit cost, renewal option, insurance split): the developer's Agreement to Lease, read for this article; general points only, the document is confidential.
• Marketing material excluded from the contract: the developer's SPA (general point); the developer's published answer on guaranteed returns, mr8.ae Questions and answers, read 7 Oct 2026.
• Office service charge, about Dh13,000 on an entry suite: Dh12 interior and Dh3 balcony per sq ft (Mr. Eight, 30 Sep 2026), areas from the business apartment list (April 2026).
• VAT on commercial property and registration thresholds: Federal Tax Authority, tax.gov.ae, read 7 Oct 2026.
• DLRC rents and prices: DLD Ejari contracts and sale registrations, 9 Jul to 7 Oct 2026, via DXB Interact, retrieved 7 Oct 2026.
• Silicon Oasis office rents (median Dh90 a sq ft, 335 contracts) and prices (median Dh1,052 a sq ft, 13 sales): same source and period; building completion dates from DLD building records on DXB Interact.