Frequently asked questions

Who pays. A traditional Dubai agent is paid by the developer, 3 to 8% of the price on off-plan against about 2% on resale, and that gap is why most shortlists in this market lean the way they do. You pay Oliva instead: AED 30,000, including VAT, in three stages, and the same schedule applies on off-plan and on resale. Where a developer pays Oliva a commission on your purchase, Oliva receives it and rebates it to you in full, so nothing Oliva earns depends on which unit you buy.

And how far it goes. An agent introduces you to a unit and leaves at the transfer. Oliva runs the brief, the shortlist, the underwriting on the units you pick, the negotiation, the paperwork and the registration, then handover and the defect list, the furnishing and the letting. You approve each decision in writing and we do the rest, whether or not you are in Dubai.

See the five steps end to end

Property is risky, and off-plan carries risks a completed unit does not. The project can run late, and roughly 40 to 50% of off-plan projects hand over late. The payment plan is contractual whether or not it runs late. A building that looks like its neighbour can carry a service charge that takes the yield to nothing.

What can be reduced is the part that comes from buying blind. Before you commit we price the unit against registered Dubai Land Department transfers in the same building and the same unit type rather than against portal asking prices, read the rent from filed Ejari contracts rather than from a brochure yield, read the approved service charge from the Land Department index, and check the developer’s delivery record and current RERA registration. Then the report states a verdict, and it is allowed to be do not buy.

What a project has to clear

Clients invest from AED 400,000, with or without a mortgage. Most invest between AED 1.2M and AED 2.5M. Below AED 400,000 we cannot run the process properly, and we say so rather than take the fee.

On off-plan the price is not due at once. Developers sell on construction-linked payment plans, so the first instalment is a fraction of it and the rest follows the build. On top of the price you budget the 4% Dubai Land Department registration fee, the AED 5,250 Oqood fee that registers an off-plan purchase, and the Oliva fee of AED 30,000, including VAT, paid in three stages. A non-resident buying with a mortgage plans on considerably more cash up front, for the reason set out in the mortgage answer below.

Yes, and it is the part most agents do not do. At handover we commission the inspection and put the written defect list to the developer before you accept the keys, because accepting handover early is how a defect becomes your cost. Then the unit is furnished to the standard the rent assumed, listed, the tenant screened, the Ejari contract filed, and the rent collected and remitted to you.

Some of those steps are run by partner firms rather than by Oliva, and those firms quote and bill you directly. Where we have a referral arrangement with one of them, we tell you the amount first. The Oliva fee itself ends at registration: the three stages cover the search and the purchase, not the years after it.

We track 785 Dubai projects and 65,899 priced off-plan units, scored on 97 metrics across 6 dimensions. Every price in that dataset comes from registered Dubai Land Department transactions and every rent from filed Ejari contracts.

A project reaches your shortlist by clearing four tests. The price holds against registered transfers in the same building and the same unit type. The rent is real and taken from filed Ejari contracts for comparable units. The approved service charge still leaves a yield. The developer has handed over before, and a first-time developer is flagged rather than hidden. A project that fails one of them does not get a paragraph explaining it away.

The model narrows the list. It does not sign anything. A RERA-licensed broker reads the shortlist against your budget, your timeline and your visa position, and puts his name on the recommendation. Nothing on that list is paid placement, and we take no listing fees.

The dimensions, the weights and the sources

It is a call with Javier Sanz, the licensed broker who would represent you, rather than with a call centre or a coach. RERA BRN 1573501, Dubai Land Department broker card 92025, and you can check both yourself in the Dubai REST app before you dial.

In it we map your goals, your budget and your timeline, put current Dubai market data from registered transfers in front of you, walk the process end to end and answer whatever you ask. You leave with a signed underwriting report on a specific unit: comparable registered sales, real Ejari rents, the service charge, the developer’s record, and a buy, negotiate or do not buy verdict with the price to open at.

The session is free and the report is free. Neither is credited against anything, and neither obliges you to engage us afterwards.

Book the session

You pay Oliva AED 30,000, including VAT, in three stages, and the same schedule applies on off-plan and on resale.

Stage one is AED 6,000, including VAT, and it begins the search. It buys the brief, the shortlist and the underwriting on the units you pick. Stage two is AED 12,000, including VAT, and it falls due on the reservation form or the SPA for an off-plan unit, or on the Form F MOU for a resale or secondary purchase. Stage three is AED 12,000, including VAT, and it falls due on registration at the Dubai Land Department: the Oqood for an off-plan unit, the title transfer for a resale.

Where a developer pays Oliva a commission on your purchase, Oliva receives it and rebates it to you in full. The session and the underwriting report are free, and the report is not credited against the fee. Every amount includes VAT. Costs you pay to someone else, such as the 4% Land Department fee, the Oqood fee, the service charges and any partner firm, are separate, are quoted before you commit and are never absorbed into the figures above.

The same schedule in the Terms

An hour for the session, then about an hour a week while the search runs, and after that only the decisions. You approve the shortlist, the offer price and the signature, each in writing. We handle the developer, the trustee office, the Land Department, the inspection and the letting.

You do not need to be in Dubai for any of it, with one exception: a golden visa application cannot be filed by a representative and the applicant has to be in the country. The purchase itself can complete while you are anywhere.

Yes. A purchase can be completed entirely from outside the UAE. The Dubai Land Department accepts an official power of attorney where the buyer is absent, and accepts a passport in place of an Emirates ID for a non-resident party.

The UAE is not a contracting party to the Hague Apostille Convention of 1961, so a power of attorney signed abroad cannot be apostilled for use at the Land Department. It goes through full consular legalisation instead, in this order: notarise it in the country where you sign it, have it legalised by that country’s foreign ministry, attested by the UAE embassy or consulate there, attested by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs inside the UAE, and translated into Arabic by a translator licensed by the Ministry of Justice.

We publish no cost and no turnaround time for legalisation, because we have no sourced figure and it varies by country. Start it early: it is the step most likely to move your transfer date and it sits entirely outside the control of anyone in Dubai. Draft the power narrowly, naming the transaction and the specific powers rather than granting an open mandate over your affairs.

Property can qualify you. The ten-year golden visa keys on AED 2,000,000 of qualifying property measured on the title deed value, not the market value, which is where most applications fail. It is a portfolio total rather than a single-property minimum, so up to three properties can be combined and spouses can pool, and mortgaged or off-plan property that is at least 50% paid can count. Below that threshold, a sole owner of qualifying freehold property can apply for the two-year renewable investor visa, and joint owners must each hold at least AED 400,000 in the property. Both cover immediate family.

Oliva structures the purchase so that it actually qualifies, and a licensed PRO partner files it. That is free with a qualifying purchase through Oliva, or AED 4,500, including VAT, as a standalone service. Government fees are charged by the government and are the same whoever files.

Two limits worth knowing before you plan around it. The federal authorities decide every application, so nobody can promise you an outcome. And the applicant has to be physically present in the UAE: a visa application, unlike the purchase, cannot be made through an attorney-in-fact.

The developer finishes the building and invites you to inspect the unit. Snagging is that inspection: a written list of defects, unfinished work and anything that does not match the specification in your SPA, put to the developer before you accept the keys. The order matters. Accepting handover early is how a defect stops being the developer’s problem and becomes your cost.

Once the list is cleared, you accept the unit, settle any remaining balance and the title deed is issued in your name at the Dubai Land Department. From that day the recurring costs begin: service charges, cooling and utilities. If you let the unit, the tenancy must be registered with Ejari, at AED 177.75 through the Land Department website or the Dubai REST app, or AED 220 at a Real Estate Trustee Centre. Register it, because judicial authorities may decline to hear a dispute on an unregistered lease.

We commission the inspection and carry the defect list to the developer. The inspection firm quotes and bills you directly, and if we have a referral arrangement with it we tell you the amount first.

The owner pays them, not the tenant. Service charges are the annual cost of running a jointly owned building: maintenance, common areas, security, the amenities and the reserve fund. They are the largest recurring cost of owning a Dubai apartment and they are the line that most often turns a headline yield into a real one.

They are building-specific, they are approved by RERA, and they are checkable before you buy. The Dubai Land Department Service Charge Index runs through the Mollak system on the Land Department website and in the Dubai REST app, returns results immediately, costs nothing and is open to non-residents. Look up by project name, use and year, multiply the approved rate by the suite area on the title deed or the SPA, and add 5% VAT, which a residential landlord cannot recover.

We publish no per-square-foot band, because no sourced one exists and a market-wide average tells you nothing about the building you are buying in. The approved figure for that building is the only one worth using, and it is the figure every Oliva underwriting reads. On a resale also ask for the seller’s most recent statement, the arrears position and the reserve fund: a developer no-objection certificate will not issue while service charges are in arrears.

Off-plan handovers slip, and roughly 40 to 50% of projects hand over late. Your own SPA is the first place to look: it states the completion date and the grace period after it, and a delay inside that grace period is not a breach. Where the payment plan is linked to construction milestones, a delay also delays what you pay.

Your instalments sit in a RERA-regulated escrow account under Law No. (8) of 2007, which dedicates the account to that project and releases money against certified construction milestones. That is a ring-fence, not a delivery guarantee. Where RERA cancels a project by reasoned decision, Article 11(b) of Law No. (13) of 2008 as superseded by Law No. (19) of 2017 requires the developer to refund all payments made by purchasers, with no discretion to retain a share, but that is an entitlement paid out of escrow: what is recovered depends on what the account and the liquidation realise.

The risk running the other way is yours. If you stop paying, Law No. (19) of 2017 lets the developer terminate after notifying the Land Department and serving a 30-day notice, and retain up to 40% of the value of the unit where completion is 60% or above, or up to 25% of it below that where work has commenced. Those are percentages of the unit value in the agreement, not of what you have paid, so a buyer who has handed over 20% and stops can lose all of it. The statutory figures are ceilings and your own contract sets the operative number, which is why we read it with you before you sign. We check the developer’s delivery record and the registered project milestones before you commit, and we chase the developer when a date moves.

Yes, and no UAE residence visa is required to borrow. Two lenders publish their non-resident terms, which makes them the only two we will quote by number: Mashreq at 50% of the bank’s own assessment of the property, up to AED 10,000,000 over a maximum term of 25 years, and HSBC UAE at 60%, restricted to its Private Bank or Premier customers. Non-resident lending across the market commonly sits in that 50% to 60% band on a completed property, so plan on 40% to 50% of the price as deposit, with the 4% Land Department fee and the fixed fees in cash on top.

What usually blocks a non-resident application is not the loan-to-value cap but the bank’s own list of approved countries, which changes without notice. We will not tell you that a named bank lends to a named nationality. Ask the bank, in writing, before you pay a deposit.

Mortgages on early-stage off-plan are limited, which is why most off-plan buyers use the developer’s construction-linked payment plan instead. Oliva is not a mortgage broker and does not process applications: we introduce you to an independent UAE-licensed broker, and we set whatever offer comes back against the payment plan before you commit to either.

Yes, in the freehold areas. Foreign nationals hold full ownership rights in the zones the Dubai government has designated freehold, which includes most of the areas anyone invests in. There is no nationality restriction, you do not need a local partner or sponsor, and the title is registered in your own name at the Dubai Land Department.

Dubai levies no annual property tax and the UAE levies no capital gains tax on a residential sale. What you do pay is the one-off 4% Land Department registration fee, the annual service charges, and a 5% municipality housing fee that appears on the utility bill of an occupied or let property. Tax in your own country of residence is a separate question, it usually still applies, and it is not one we advise on: take it to your own adviser.

Yes. The underwriting report on a specific unit ends in one of three verdicts: buy, negotiate, or do not buy. It is allowed to end in do not buy, including on projects whose developer pays us.

An adviser paid only when you buy has one honest answer available and it is always yes. That is the reason the fee is published, staged and paid to us by you, and the reason any developer commission is rebated to you in full. The conflict is priced and disclosed rather than declared away.

What is inside the report

Oliva DB Properties CO. L.L.C. S.O.C. is registered with the Real Estate Regulatory Agency under BRN 1573501 and holds Dubai Land Department broker card 92025. Both are on the Land Department public register and both come up in the Dubai REST app.

Check them. Then check them for anyone else in this market who asks you to send money, because a registration number is the one credential in Dubai property that cannot be bought, borrowed or written on a website by the person claiming it.

The broker who signs the report