Buying property in Dubai: the checks a buyer can run before signing

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Kooky

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

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A home purchase in Dubai rests on a small number of documents: a title deed, a sale contract, a broker's card, an advertisement, a statement of charges. Each of them can be read on trust, or it can be compared with what the Dubai Land Department holds. The second route is open to anyone. The Department, known as the DLD, publishes a set of enquiry services on its website and in its Dubai REST application, and several of them answer immediately.

This guide goes through those checks in the order a buyer usually meets them: the property itself, the people selling it, the advertisement, the project and its escrow account when the home is not yet built, the yearly charges, the defect periods, the price, and the warning signs around cash and unsolicited calls. Each rule is given with the Dubai law or the DLD page it comes from. The laws were read in the English translations published on the Dubai Legislation Portal, which state that the Arabic text prevails if the two differ. Everything here describes the general rule in the emirate of Dubai; how it applies to one purchase depends on that purchase.

Dubai Law No. 6 of 2019, Articles 40 and 32, and Dubai Law No. 8 of 2007, Article 14, as published in English on the Dubai Legislation Portal.

Why the register is the starting point

Dubai Law No. 7 of 2006 Concerning Real Property Registration is the reason the first check is always a check of the register. Under Article 7 of that law, as published on the Dubai Legislation Portal and read on 10 October 2026, the Property Register has absolute evidentiary value against everyone, with one exception: fraud or forgery. Article 24 gives the title deeds issued by the Department the same absolute value as proof of property rights. In plain terms, what the register says about who owns a property is what counts, and a paper that only looks like a title deed counts for nothing.

That exception is exactly what a buyer can test. The DLD runs a service called Verify Title Deed, which confirms the validity of a certificate of title issued by the Land Department. According to the DLD's service page, it is available on the Department's website and in Dubai REST, and the answer is given immediately. The service page does not describe which details have to be typed in, so a buyer finds that out on the form itself.

The check is narrow. It says whether the certificate shown by the seller is a valid certificate issued by the Department. It does not value the property, and none of the DLD pages read for this guide explains how to interpret a mortgage or a restriction recorded against a title. That question is left open here and comes back in the last section.

Checking the status of the property

A second service looks at the property instead of the certificate. Property Status Enquiry returns the status of a property from data such as its area and its land number, according to the DLD. Like the title deed check, it runs on the Department's website or in Dubai REST and answers immediately.

The two checks complete each other. One starts from the document the seller hands over, the other from the plot or unit as the Department identifies it.

The table below gathers the enquiry services named in this guide, with what each starts from. All are run by the Dubai Land Department.

Who is selling: the broker and the company

Most buyers deal with a broker before they deal with an owner or a developer. In Dubai a broker carries a card issued by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency, the DLD's regulator, usually called RERA. The Department's Ecard verification service checks such a card from two pieces of information, the card type and the card number, inside Dubai REST. The result is immediate.

The card is not the only thing that can be looked up. The DLD's directory of services lists published registers of licensed brokers, licensed brokerage companies and licensed developers, together with approved escrow account trustees, accredited valuation companies and approved auditors. The same directory holds a service named Verify License and Permits and a Trade License Search. The overview pages do not say what each of these tools asks for, so their exact fields are not described here.

What a broker owes the other side is also written down. By-law No. 85 of 2006, which regulates the Real Estate Brokers Register in Dubai, requires a broker in its Article 17 to disclose material facts about the property to the other party. One caution on the source: the by-law was read for this guide in an English reproduction published by a legal information site, because the official portal copy could not be opened. The article number and wording should be taken with that reserve.

What an advertisement must carry

The advertisement is often the first sight of a property, and it is regulated. According to a DLD statement of 24 April 2025, every real estate advertisement must carry a QR code issued by the Madmoun service in Trakheesi, the Department's permit system. The code lets a customer verify that the advertisement is approved by RERA.

The same statement described how the rule is policed. The Department said its artificial intelligence platform had monitored more than 279,000 advertisements on three property portals, Property Finder, Dubizzle and Bayut, and that 29% of them had been modified automatically. The figure is the one given in that April 2025 statement; no later count was read for this guide.

Behind the code sits a permit. The DLD's Real Estate Ad Permit page lists fourteen kinds of advertising activity that need one, from newspaper, electronic and billboard advertisements to open house events, project launch events and real estate exhibitions. A broker applying for most of them must supply a copy of the marketing contract with the property owner, the page says.

Two rules on that page matter to anyone who visits a property exhibition. Off-plan properties in Dubai that are not registered with the Escrow Account Department cannot be shown there. And sales are not allowed during an exhibition: only preliminary reservations are.

Off-plan: is the project approved and registered

A home bought before it is built is an off-plan purchase, and Dubai has a specific law for it: Law No. 13 of 2008 Regulating the Interim Property Register. The law defines an off-plan sale as the sale of units off-plan or of units that are unfinished. The Interim Property Register is the record, kept by the Department, in which those sales are entered before the units reach the Property Register itself.

Three articles of that law translate directly into checks.

Article 3 says that any disposition of an off-plan unit must be entered in the Interim Property Register, and that a sale which is not entered there is void. Registration is therefore not a formality that follows the deal. It is a condition of the deal existing.

Article 4 says that no master developer or sub-developer may start a project or sell off-plan before taking possession of the land and obtaining the required approvals from the competent entities. A master developer, in the law's words, is a person licensed to carry out real estate development and to sell units to third parties; a sub-developer takes on part of a master developer's project under an agreement between them.

Article 10 closes the loop: no developer or broker may enter into an off-plan sale contract for a project that the competent entities have not approved, and a contract made before that approval is null and void.

The buyer's tool here is the DLD's Project Status Enquiry. From a land number, a project number or a project name, it gives the project's completion percentage and its details. It is offered on the Department's website, in Dubai REST and through the Department's virtual assistant on WhatsApp, named Malik. Dubai REST also shows, for off-plan projects, the completion percentage, actual photographs of the project and the escrow account number, according to the DLD's page on the application.

The same law contains a rule for the day of delivery. Under Article 12 the area of the sold unit is deemed correct. If the finished unit turns out larger, the developer cannot ask for more money. If it turns out smaller, the developer must compensate the purchaser, unless the decrease is inconsequential. The law as read does not put a figure on that last word.

Article 8 describes the end of the road: developers must enter completed projects in the Property Register once they hold the completion certificate, including registering sold units in the names of purchasers who have met their contractual obligations.

Off-plan: where the money goes

The second off-plan law is older: Dubai Law No. 8 of 2007 on Escrow Accounts for Real Estate Development. It applies to developers who sell units off-plan and receive payments from purchasers or from financers. Its central idea is that a buyer's instalments go into a bank account that belongs to the project, not to the developer's general funds.

The law defines the escrow account as the project account in which payments from off-plan purchasers or project financers are deposited. The account is managed by an escrow agent, defined as a financial or banking institution accredited by the Department. The DLD's own service page calls the same institutions approved escrow account trustees and publishes their list on its website and in Dubai REST.

How the account comes into being is a check in itself. Under Article 6, a developer that wishes to sell off-plan must request an escrow account from the Department, with a file that includes its trade licence, the title deed to the land, the approved initial designs, a cost and revenue statement certified by a chartered auditor and a standard sale contract. Under Article 7 the account is opened by written agreement between the developer and the escrow agent, and a copy goes to the Department.

Article 9 holds the protections. Each account is opened in the name of its project and is dedicated exclusively to the construction of that project. A developer with several projects needs a separate account for each. And the money cannot be attached for the benefit of the developer's creditors. Article 13 adds that loans raised from finance institutions against a mortgaged project must also be paid into that project's account.

For the buyer this produces one firm rule and one right. The rule is stated in the Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide published by the DLD and RERA in November 2024: off-plan buyers pay only into the project's escrow account. The account number shown in Dubai REST is what a payment instruction can be compared with. The right is in Article 12 of the 2007 law: depositors, or their representatives, may see their own accounting records and ask for copies.

The retention in Article 14 is easier to picture with numbers. As a worked example, assume an escrow account whose total value is AED 200 million when the developer obtains the completion certificate. The escrow agent keeps back 5% of that, which is AED 10 million, and releases it to the developer one year after the units are registered in the purchasers' names. The AED 200 million is an illustrative figure, not a market one.

The law also says what happens if things go wrong. Under Article 15, if a project is not completed, the escrow agent must, after consulting the Department, protect the depositors' rights and ensure that the project is completed or that depositors are refunded.

The yearly bill: service charges

A flat or a villa in a shared community comes with a yearly cost, and a buyer can read it before buying. The framework is Dubai Law No. 6 of 2019 Concerning Ownership of Jointly Owned Real Property. It defines service charges as the annual charges collected from owners to cover the cost of managing, operating, maintaining and repairing the jointly owned property. Usage charges are a separate annual charge, collected from owners or sub-developers for managing and maintaining the common facilities of a master project.

The amounts are not set freely. Under Article 27, a management entity may not collect any charges without first obtaining RERA's approval, and RERA cannot approve the budget unless an audit firm it recognises has approved it. That is why the DLD can publish a Service Charge Index: the service shows RERA-approved service fees by project, by use and by year, drawn from the Mollak system, on the Department's website and in Dubai REST.

Article 25 explains how the bill is shared. Each owner pays the management entity a share based on the ratio of the area of the owner's unit to the total area of the property, using the areas recorded in the register. The developer pays for unsold units.

A worked example shows the arithmetic. Assume a unit of 100 square metres in a property whose total area for this purpose is 10,000 square metres, and an approved yearly budget of AED 2 million. The unit's share is 100 divided by 10,000, or 1%, and 1% of AED 2 million is AED 20,000 a year. All three starting figures are illustrative.

The point that turns service charges into a pre-purchase check is Article 32. The management entity has a lien on every unit for unpaid service charges, and a unit may not be disposed of unless those charges are paid to the management entity. An owner who receives the RERA-approved written notice has 30 days to pay; after that the claim is enforced by the execution judge, who may order the unit sold at public auction. Article 28 adds that owners may not withhold approved charges. For a buyer on the resale market, the state of the seller's service charge account is therefore part of whether the sale can go through at all.

Building documents and defect periods

The 2019 law also tells a buyer which documents govern life in the building. Under Article 6, the plans, the master community declaration, the statute and the building management regulation form part of the title deed, and the DLD keeps the originals.

These papers can be asked for. Article 4 requires the DLD to keep a register of jointly owned property that includes the units and their owners' names, the members of the owners committee, the building management regulations, the management entities and their contracts. The Department issues certificates and documents related to units on request, and the article says any interested party may access the register. The developer has to file the governing documents with the DLD within 60 days of the completion certificate, a period the Department may extend by up to 30 days.

Then come the periods during which the developer answers for the building, set by Article 40.

The starting dates matter more than the lengths. The structural period runs from the completion certificate of the building, not from the day a later buyer acquires the unit, so the age of the building decides how much of the period is left. The same article states that any later agreement contradicting it is void, and that owners keep whatever rights other legislation gives them.

The price: valuation and the declared value

Whether the price is right is a market question, and no register answers it. The DLD does offer one official reference: a property valuation. According to its service page, the fee for a residential villa with land or a residential apartment is AED 4,000, to which a knowledge fee of AED 10 and an innovation fee of AED 10 are added, AED 4,020 in all. A partner fee of AED 230 plus VAT is listed when the request goes through a registrar centre.

The page gives the processing time as instant for residential units and attached villas, and seven working days for other property types. The channels are the Real Estate Services Trustee Centres, Dubai REST and the Dubai Now application, and the result is an electronic valuation certificate. One practical limit: the documents the page lists for every request include a letter from the owner with a copy of the owner's passport or Emirates ID, so a buyer's valuation request depends on the seller's cooperation. The page does not state how long a certificate remains valid.

The value written into the sale also has a legal side. Dubai Executive Council Resolution No. 30 of 2013, which approves the Land Department's fees, allows the Department to reassess a declared price that is below market value. A false value carries a fine of double the fee, according to the resolution.

Cash, unsolicited calls and tokenised offers

Three warning signs have written rules behind them.

The first is cash. A circular of the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Economy on real estate activity reports, Circular No. 05/2022 of 24 June 2022, provides that cash of AED 55,000 or more paid towards a freehold purchase triggers a mandatory report by the broker, with identity documents collected from both the buyer and the seller. Later ministry guidance was not read in full for this guide, so the threshold is given as the 2022 circular states it.

The second is the unsolicited call. In a statement of 29 April 2022 reporting a fine on a brokerage office, the DLD said that cold calling is punishable by a fine of AED 50,000, by suspension of the broker's card for at least three months, or by both. Such calls can be reported in Dubai REST under Report Malicious Calls. The 2024 brokerage practice guide adds that brokers may approach only owners who are on the Green List.

The third is the tokenised offer, a share of a property sold as a digital token. The Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, Dubai's virtual assets regulator, issued a consumer and marketplace alert on 19 February 2026 about the real estate tokenisation pilot. Its message for buyers is that such offers should be checked against the authority's Public Register.

What these checks do not settle

The official tools cover a great deal, and they leave some questions without a published answer. Three were looked for and not found on the primary pages read for this guide.

No DLD page read explains how a buyer should read a mortgage or a restriction recorded against a title. The title deed and property status services exist, but their overview pages do not describe their input fields or the detail of what they return on that point.

No primary page was found on snagging, the inspection of a new home for defects before or at handover, or on the handover procedure itself. Article 40 of the 2019 law fixes how long the developer is liable; it does not describe how a defect list is drawn up.

No primary page was found on the no-objection certificate that developers issue in resale transactions. It is therefore left out of this guide altogether, without a fee or a deadline.

One reserve applies to the laws themselves. The English texts of Law No. 13 of 2008 and Law No. 8 of 2007 were read as published on the Dubai Legislation Portal, where they carry no amendment notes. The portal copy may not show every later change, which is why this guide leaves aside the 2008 law's provisions on a purchaser's default and keeps to the articles on registration, approval and area.

A seller's document says what the seller wants to show. The register, the project file and the escrow account say what the Land Department holds.

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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