Where foreigners can own property in Dubai, and the golden visa

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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Two questions come up in almost every conversation with an overseas buyer in Dubai. Can a foreigner really own a home here, outright and for good? And does the purchase come with the right to live in the country? Both have answers in official texts, and both answers are narrower than the marketing around them suggests.

This guide follows the primary sources. Ownership is governed by a Dubai law of 2006 and by the regulations that name, plot by plot, where non-UAE nationals may hold property. Residence is a separate matter, handled through a golden visa service run by the Dubai Land Department and described, in slightly different terms, on the UAE Government's official portal. The guide sets out what each text says, how a purchase is registered, what a foreign buyer may borrow, and where the official pages are silent or disagree with each other.

Dubai Regulation No. (3) of 2006, Dubai Law No. (7) of 2006 and the Dubai Land Department's golden visa service page.

The starting point: ownership is reserved, with an exception

The rule that surprises newcomers is the first one. Dubai Law No. (7) of 2006 Concerning Real Property Registration, issued on 13 March 2006 and published on the Dubai Legislation Portal, does not open the emirate's land to everyone. Article 4 restricts the ownership of real property to four groups: UAE nationals, nationals of the Gulf Cooperation Council states, companies wholly owned by them, and public joint stock companies.

The same article then creates the exception on which the whole foreign-buyer market rests. With the approval of the Ruler of Dubai, non-UAE nationals may be granted rights in areas that the Ruler designates. Inside those areas the door is wide: the article allows freehold ownership with no time limit. Outside them the general restriction of Article 4 applies.

So the question a foreign buyer needs answered is never simply whether a foreigner can buy in Dubai. It is whether this plot lies inside a designated area, and which right the designation allows there. The law applies, according to its Article 3, to real property in the Emirate of Dubai. It says nothing about the other emirates, each of which has its own rules, and nothing in this guide should be read across to Abu Dhabi, Sharjah or anywhere else in the UAE.

The law also defines its own terms, and they are worth knowing because every later document uses them. Real property is "anything which is fixed and cannot be moved without damage or alteration of its structure". Real property rights are any principal or collateral rights in rem, which in plain language means rights attached to the property itself and not just to a person. The Department, wherever the law uses the word, is the Land Department.

Three rights a non-UAE national can hold

Article 4 of the law names three rights that may be granted to non-UAE nationals in designated areas. They are not interchangeable, and a listing that says "foreign ownership allowed" does not tell a buyer which of the three is on offer.

Freehold is the right most buyers have in mind: ownership of the property itself, without an end date. Usufruct and leasehold are rights for a fixed period, capped by the law at 99 years. The law groups the two together and sets the same ceiling for both. It also treats long leaseholds as serious enough to be registered: Article 6 makes the Land Department the only body authorised to register real property rights and the long-term leasehold contracts provided for in Article 4.

The practical point is that a designation may open only part of the menu. One plot in the 2006 regulation, described below, is open to non-UAE nationals for usufruct or leasehold only. A buyer who assumes freehold everywhere inside "a foreign ownership area" may be wrong about that plot.

Where: the areas named in the 2006 regulation

The law leaves the map to a second text. Regulation No. (3) of 2006 Determining Areas for Ownership by Non-UAE Nationals of Real Property in the Emirate of Dubai was issued by the Ruler of Dubai on 7 June 2006. Its Article 3 lists the plots where non-UAE nationals may acquire freehold ownership without time restriction, or usufruct or leasehold rights for up to 99 years.

The list, as published on the Dubai Legislation Portal, has 23 entries. Read in order, they are: Umm Hurair 2; Al Barsha South 2; Al Barsha South 3; Emirates Hills 1, 2 and 3; Jebel Ali; Al Jaddaf; The World Islands; Ras al Khor; Al Rowyah; Sheikh Zayed Road; Sofouh 1 and Sofouh 2; Al-Qouz 3; Al-Qouz Industrial Area 2 and Al-Qouz Industrial Area 3; Mirdif; Dubai Marina; Palm Jebel Ali; Palm Jumairah; Nad al-Sheba; and Warsan 1.

Two features of the list matter more than the names.

The first is that the regulation designates plots, not whole districts. Each entry carries one or more plot numbers. Sheikh Zayed Road appears with two plots, numbered 118 and 147. Mirdif appears with two, numbered 143 and 144. Dubai Marina has four plot numbers, Jebel Ali nine. A district name on the list therefore does not mean that every building in the district of that name is open to foreign ownership. It means that the numbered plots are.

The second is the exception in Article 4 of the regulation. On plot 224 in Nad al-Sheba, non-UAE nationals may acquire usufruct or leasehold rights for up to 99 years, and the article does not mention freehold. Nad al-Sheba also appears in the main list of Article 3 with three other plots, so the same area holds plots with different regimes.

The regulation says the areas are those shown on maps issued by the Land Department and attached to it. Those maps are not reproduced in the text published on the Dubai Legislation Portal. The English text also carries a note that the Arabic version prevails if the two differ.

The list has grown since 2006

Nobody should treat the 2006 list as the full picture in 2026. The Dubai Land Department's own compilation of the emirate's real estate legislation lists, in its table of contents, a series of later instruments that amend the regulation or add land to it: Regulation No. (1) of 2010, which amends it; Regulation No. (1) of 2011; Regulations No. (2) and No. (3) of 2012; Resolution No. (14) of 2015; Resolution No. (8) of 2016; and Resolution No. (18) of 2019.

This guide names those instruments because the department's compilation names them. It does not describe what land each one adds, because their texts were not read for it. That is also why the place names used in everyday conversation, the ones on brochures and property portals, are not matched here to plot numbers. The official texts work with community names and plot numbers that often differ from the commercial names of the developments built on them, and no official page read for this guide provides a conversion table.

For a buyer, an agent or a conveyancer, the consequence is simple to state. Whether a given unit can be owned by a non-UAE national, and under which of the three rights, is a question about a specific plot. It is answered by the Land Department's records and maps for that plot, not by the name of the neighbourhood.

Several Land Department procedures give indirect signals that a plot is open to foreign buyers, and they are useful to understand even though none replaces the department's own record.

The department's Register Project service, which developers use to register a new development, requires the land to be in a freehold area or a long-term lease area. A project sold to the public off-plan has therefore passed through a step where the nature of the area was a condition.

The department's Property Sale Registration service lists, among the documents for a sale, an electronic no-objection certificate from the developer for freehold areas, obtained through the department's Dubai REST application. The requirement tells a buyer two things: that the department itself classifies the property as lying in a freehold area, and that the developer has a say before the transfer goes through.

The title document is the third signal, and the strongest. Under Article 22 of Law No. (7) of 2006 the department issues title deeds on the basis of the data in its register, and Article 24 says that conditions, undertakings or restrictions on a real property right must be stated in the record of the unit. What the buyer acquires is what the record says, including any limit attached to it.

Why registration is the whole point

In many countries a signed contract is what makes a sale. In Dubai the law puts the weight on the register.

Article 9 of Law No. (7) of 2006 requires every transaction that creates, transfers, amends or extinguishes a real property right to be recorded in the Property Register, and, in its original wording, added that such transactions are not deemed valid unless they are recorded. Law No. (7) of 2019, issued on 4 September 2019, replaced that article: the dispositions are now not deemed effective unless recorded in the Real Property Register, and a second paragraph, which preserves the rights of persons acting in good faith, makes recorded dispositions effective against all persons. Article 7 gives the register "absolute evidentiary value against all parties": what it says can be challenged only by proving fraud or forgery. Article 8 extends the same value to documents recorded electronically, and Article 24 gives title deeds absolute evidentiary value in verifying real property rights.

For a foreign buyer this cuts both ways. A registered right is very hard to dislodge. An unregistered one, whatever the private paperwork says, is not deemed effective under Article 9 as amended in 2019.

Article 26 closes the obvious loophole. Any agreement or disposition in breach of the law is null and void, and so is an agreement made to get round it. The article lets any interested party, the department, the Public Prosecution or the court on its own initiative raise that invalidity. An arrangement designed to give a non-UAE national the benefit of a property outside the designated areas, by holding it in someone else's name for instance, is exactly the kind of agreement the article is aimed at. The law does not rank such arrangements by how carefully they are drafted; it calls them void.

Buying from abroad: the registration procedure

A buyer does not need to live in the UAE to register a purchase. The Dubai Land Department's Property Sale Registration page gives the residency status for the service as "All". Residents identify themselves with an Emirates ID. Non-resident foreigners present a valid passport instead.

What a non-resident cannot do is complete the sale from a phone. The department offers a fully digital sale through the Dubai Now application, and its page for that service limits it to holders of a UAE ID, meaning citizens and residents. Everyone else goes through a Real Estate Registration Trustee centre, the service channel the department lists for sale registration.

The department gives a processing time of 25 minutes for the service. It applies to a sale, full or partial, of land, property or a completed unit, between the seller and the buyer or their legal representatives. Where a company is a party, the page says the company must first be registered with the department through a separate request.

The fee schedule on the same page sets a seller fee of 2% of the sale value and a buyer fee of 2% of the sale value. It then lists fixed charges: AED 250 for issuing the title deed certificate, a knowledge fee of AED 10 and an innovation fee of AED 10, plus map fees that depend on the property: the page lists AED 225, AED 100 and AED 250 lines for different cases. A service partner fee, charged by the trustee centre, is AED 4,000 plus VAT when the sale value is AED 500,000 or more and AED 2,000 plus VAT below that. The page does not say which party pays the fixed charges or the partner fee.

A worked example shows the scale. Assume a completed apartment sold for AED 2,000,000. The buyer's 2% fee is AED 40,000 and the seller's 2% fee is AED 40,000. Adding the title deed certificate and the two AED 10 fees gives AED 270 of fixed charges, and the partner fee for a sale of that size is AED 4,000 plus VAT. The figures are illustrative: the sale value is assumed, and the map fees are left out because they depend on the property.

What an expatriate buyer may borrow

Being allowed to own is one thing; being allowed to borrow is another, and here the rule is federal. The Central Bank of the UAE's Regulations Regarding Mortgage Loans, in force since late 2013 and published in the central bank's rulebook, cap how much of a property's value a bank may lend. The caps are lower for expatriates than the law of ownership might lead a buyer to expect, and they fall as the purchase moves away from a first home.

Take the same AED 2,000,000 apartment as a second worked example. If it is an expatriate's first home, the cap of 80% allows a loan of up to AED 1,600,000, and the buyer brings at least AED 400,000. If it is bought as an investment, the 60% cap allows AED 1,200,000 and the buyer brings AED 800,000. If it is bought off-plan, the 50% cap allows AED 1,000,000 and the buyer brings the other AED 1,000,000. These are ceilings under the regulation with an assumed price, not offers: what a bank lends to a given borrower depends on its own assessment.

One Dubai programme is worth a line because buyers often assume it is closed to them. The Dubai Land Department's overview of its First-Time Home Buyer programme says eligibility is open to UAE residents of any nationality. The condition is residence, not citizenship, so a non-resident investor is outside it.

Does buying a home give a golden visa?

Ownership does not, by itself, give any right of residence. Nothing in Law No. (7) of 2006 or in the 2006 regulation mentions visas. Residence comes from a separate application, and for property owners in Dubai the route is a service the Dubai Land Department calls the golden visa application for investors.

According to the department's service page, a real estate investor can apply when they own property whose purchase value was equal to or more than AED 2 million at the time of purchase. Three conditions shape who qualifies.

• The value is the purchase value. The page measures the AED 2 million at the time of purchase. It does not refer to a current valuation.
• The property is wholly owned by the investor, in the applicant's name. The page accepts one property or several.
• A mortgage is not a bar. The page allows mortgaged property, on condition that the bank supplies a no-objection letter saying it does not object to the permit being issued and stating the amount paid and the remaining balance.

The page gives the eligible residency status as resident foreign investor or visiting foreign investor, so a buyer who lives abroad is not excluded for that reason. The applicant must, however, be inside the UAE when applying.

What the investor receives, in the department's words, is a 10-year renewable residence permit. The page says the investor can also sponsor a husband or wife, children and parents, each on a 10-year permit.

The UAE Government's official portal describes the golden visa in general terms. It presents it as a long-term residence visa, renewable, valid for 5 or 10 years, that needs no sponsor. The portal adds two benefits: holders can stay outside the UAE for longer than the usual six months without losing the visa, and they can sponsor family members, including spouses and children.

Five years or ten: the two official pages disagree

Here the sources part company, and the difference is not small.

The two pages agree on the amount. The federal portal gives a minimum capital of AED 2 million for investors, and the department gives AED 2 million as the minimum purchase value. They disagree on what that sum buys in years of residence.

The disagreement is reported here as it stands, because no official page read for this guide settles it. The Dubai Land Department page is the description of a service that is actually delivered in Dubai, with a fee table priced for 10-year documents: an Emirates ID for 10 years and a confirmation of the residency permit for 10 years. The federal portal is the general description of the visa across the UAE and carries a readable update date. Which of the two reflects the permit issued to a given applicant is a question for the issuing authorities, and it is the first thing to confirm before a purchase is planned around a residence period.

It also follows that any statement of the form "buy for AED 2 million and get ten years" is a quotation from one official page, not a settled rule that both pages share.

Applying: documents, fees and timing

The department's page sets out the application in four stages.

1. The customer goes to a service centre.
2. The customer submits the requirements and pays the fees.
3. The customer has a medical examination at the centre.
4. The residence permit is sent to the applicant by email.

The stated processing time is 7 to 10 business days. Only the applicant may attend: the page says a representative cannot apply on the investor's behalf. Taken with the rule that the applicant must be inside the UAE, this means the application cannot be delegated from abroad in the way a purchase can be handled through a legal representative.

The applicant's file is short: a passport, the electronic certificate of title or the title deed, a personal photograph, and the UAE ID and current residence permit if the applicant has them. Family applications need more. For a spouse and children the page lists, among other items, a certified marriage contract, certified birth certificates for the children and health insurance. For parents it asks for a certified dependency certificate from the consulate, a certified birth certificate and health insurance.

The service is offered at the Golden Visa Services desk at Al Manara Center, at the Dubai World Trade Centre, at the Golden Cube and at three registration trustee offices. The department names the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship, the Dubai Health Authority and insurance companies as its partners for the service.

Family members are priced separately. The page gives AED 5,774.50 for a family residence permit of 10 years, AED 318.75 for opening the family sponsorship file, and AED 5,774.50 for a parents' residence permit of 10 years. A note adds AED 100 for each sponsored person.

A last worked example, with its assumptions stated: an investor applying with a spouse, reading the family permit fee as applying once to the spouse. The investor's total is AED 9,884.75. The spouse adds AED 5,774.50, the file opening adds AED 318.75 and the per-person note adds AED 100, which makes AED 6,193.25 for the spouse and AED 16,078.00 for the couple. The page does not say whether the family permit fee is charged per person or per family, so the cost for children cannot be computed from it with confidence.

Set against the purchase, the order of magnitude is clear. On the AED 2,000,000 apartment used above, the buyer's registration fee alone is AED 40,000, about four times the AED 9,884.75 that the investor's own permit costs.

What the official pages leave open

Several questions that buyers ask every week are not answered on the pages this guide relies on. They are listed here so that silence is not mistaken for a yes.

Off-plan property. The Dubai Land Department's golden visa page does not mention off-plan property, and the federal portal says nothing on it either. The page's applicant documents refer to an electronic certificate of title or a title deed. Whether a unit still under construction can support an application is not stated on either page.

Joint ownership. The department's page speaks of property wholly owned by the investor and held in the applicant's name. It does not address a property held jointly, by spouses for example.

How much must be paid on a mortgaged property. The page asks for a bank letter stating the amount paid and the balance. Whether a minimum amount must have been paid before the application is accepted is a point to confirm with the department, since the terms on the page do not settle it clearly.

Other residence routes linked to property. Shorter property-linked residence permits are often mentioned in the market. They do not appear on the pages read for this guide and are not described here.

The current map. As set out above, the instruments issued between 2010 and 2019 are named but not detailed, and commercial area names are not matched to plot numbers.

One tax question does have an official answer, and it is a reassuring one for private buyers. The UAE Ministry of Finance's corporate tax questions and answers say that a foreign individual who invests in UAE real estate in a personal capacity, without a licence, is generally not subject to corporate tax. The qualifier matters: the answer turns on how the investment is held and run, and it says nothing about the tax position in the buyer's home country.

Ownership depends on the plot, residence depends on a separate application, and on the length of that residence two official pages still give two different numbers.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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