6 Things to Know Before Selling Dubai Property

Selling in Dubai is mostly a documents problem. Your title deed, the developer's No Objection Certificate and, if the unit is financed, the mortgage discharge decide how fast you can transfer. Price and buyer demand decide whether you transfer at all. This post covers six things that change the outcome, in the order they usually bite.

Two of the six are money items: what leaves your side at the registration trustee, and what your unit is being compared against. Our project database carries 780 active off-plan promotions, so a resale seller is rarely the only option on a buyer's shortlist. If you want your own unit written up before you list, the underwriting report is free.

Collect these first: the original title deed in your name, or the sale and purchase agreement plus the Oqood registration if the building has not been handed over; passport and Emirates ID copies for every owner; the developer's service charge statement; the mortgage statement and outstanding balance if the unit is financed; the Ejari registration and tenancy contract if it is let; and the DEWA account details.

If the deed is in joint names, every owner signs at the trustee or grants a power of attorney. If the owner is a company, the trustee needs the trade licence, the memorandum of association and a board resolution naming the signatory. Missing paperwork, not buyer hesitation, is the most common reason a transfer date slips.

If your unit is mortgaged, you cannot transfer until the loan is repaid and the mortgage is discharged at DLD. The sequence is fixed: you request a liability letter from your bank, the outstanding balance is settled, the bank issues the discharge and releases the original deed, then the transfer registers. Your bank's turnaround, not your buyer's enthusiasm, sets the completion date.

Where the buyer is also borrowing, two lenders have to line up on the same day. The buyer's bank issues its final offer and a manager's cheque, and it may require the property blocked in its favour before releasing funds. Ask both banks for their stated turnaround in writing before you agree a completion window in the contract.

If the outstanding balance is higher than the price you can achieve, you cover the shortfall in cash before the bank will discharge. Establish where you stand on that before you set an asking price, not after you have accepted an offer.

DLD will not register a resale transfer without a No Objection Certificate from the developer confirming there are no outstanding service charges, penalties or restrictions on the transfer. The developer will not issue it while arrears sit on the unit. Request the service charge statement early; it often shows amounts an absent owner did not know were accruing.

The developer sets its own NOC fee, processing time and validity window, and some require a site inspection or the unit handed back in a stated condition. Get that requirement list in writing at the point you list, not the week you want to transfer. If the certificate expires before your trustee appointment, it has to be reissued.

If your building has not been handed over, you do not hold a title deed. You hold a sale and purchase agreement and an Oqood interim registration. Selling is an assignment of that agreement to a new buyer, registered by DLD against Oqood. It is not a title deed transfer, and it does not follow the same document chain.

The developer controls whether you can assign at all. Your agreement sets the minimum proportion of the price you must have paid before assignment is permitted, and the developer charges its own transfer or administration fee. That threshold is a term of your own contract, not a market convention, so read the assignment clause before you market the unit.

Your buyer also inherits the remaining payment schedule. Plans in our database are structured in percentage steps against milestones. Oksa Developers' Aristo in Dubai South is 5% on booking, 45% after booking and 50% on handover. Al Dhana's Celestara Residences in JVC is 20%, then 30%, then 50% on handover. If most of your schedule is unpaid, the buyer is taking that on and will price it in.

DLD charges a transfer fee of 4% of the sale price plus an AED 580 admin fee on registration. By convention the buyer pays it, but the allocation is a contract term, and sellers do sometimes absorb part of it to close a deal. Whatever you agree goes in the contract in writing, because the cheques are drawn on that basis.

On a resale, Oliva's fee is 2% of the price plus 5% VAT on that fee. On off-plan, the developer pays the commission and the buyer pays nothing for representation. Every fee we charge is published at /en/services#every-fee, with nothing conditional on how the deal is structured.

The remaining line items belong to other parties: the developer's NOC fee, your bank's discharge charges, and the registration trustee's own fee. Each of those is set by the party charging it, so ask for the current figure in writing at contract stage. We do not publish estimates for fees we do not set.

Asking prices tell you what other sellers hope for. DLD records tell you what buyers actually paid. Pull the recorded sales for your own building over the last twelve months, plus the closest comparable stack nearby, and treat that spread as your evidence base. A portal listing that has sat unsold for months is not a comparable; it is a failed experiment.

Area figures are orientation, not valuation. Our area dataset records reference sale levels of AED 3,959,199 for Business Bay, AED 2,412,702 for Dubai Marina, AED 2,032,225 for Al Furjan and AED 1,752,520 for Motor City. Those are aggregates across unit types and sizes. Your studio is not the area figure, and neither is your three bedroom.

We do not publish a price per square foot. Our dataset does not carry a verified one, and a psf number lifted from an unverified source is the fastest way to misprice a unit by a six figure margin. If someone quotes you a psf for your building, ask which transactions it was built from.

A buyer looking at your ready unit can instead put a small first instalment into a new project and pay the rest against construction milestones. Our database carries 780 active off-plan promotions, and the supply priced under AED 1M is concentrated in a short list of areas. If your unit sits in one of them, that is your competition.

Your advantages over that supply are real, but you have to state them: the unit exists, there is no construction risk, and it can produce rent from the day of transfer. If it is tenanted with an Ejari registration in place, that is an asset to an investor and an obstacle to an end user who wants to move in. Know which buyer you are selling to.

If your property is the asset that qualifies you for a property based golden visa, selling removes it. The property route rests on AED 2,000,000 of property value. If you intend to sell one qualifying property and buy another, take immigration advice on the sequencing before you sign anything, and do not assume the residency survives the gap between the two registrations.

A tenancy registered with Ejari runs with the property. The new owner takes it over on the existing terms until expiry, and the security deposit should be handed across at transfer. If your buyer wants vacant possession, notice has to be served through the proper legal channel and planned before contract. Never promise a buyer vacant possession you cannot lawfully deliver on their timeline.

In order: sign the DLD contract with both brokers, obtain the developer's NOC, discharge any mortgage, book the registration trustee appointment, attend with the original deed, identity documents, the NOC and the cheques, pay the fees at the counter, and collect the new title deed issued in the buyer's name. You then hand over keys, access cards and the DEWA account.

If you cannot attend, a power of attorney works, but one executed outside the UAE must be notarised, then attested and legalised for use here, then translated into Arabic by a legal translator. Scope it to the specific property and the specific acts. Start it the week you sign, because it is the item that most often delays an overseas seller.

The six items are the mortgage discharge, the developer's NOC, the off-plan assignment rules in your own agreement, the transfer costs, pricing off recorded transactions, and the off-plan supply your buyer is comparing you to. Three of them are documents, two are arithmetic, and the last is knowing what else your buyer can buy. None of them require a forecast, and none require you to guess what the market will do next.

If you want your unit priced against what actually transacted, with the cost side laid out before you sign a contract, the underwriting report is free. Our full fee position is at /en/services#every-fee, and the off-plan projects we track are at /en/projects.