Dubai Property Fees 2026: Who Pays the 4%, and What Off-Plan and Resale Each Cost

This guide prices a studio, one-bedroom or two-bedroom Dubai apartment under AED 2,500,000, bought by someone who is often not a UAE resident and often not in the country. It is not written for a villa, a townhouse, a penthouse or commercial space.

Off-plan and resale are two different purchases with two different bills, and averaging them is the most common error in Dubai fee content. On off-plan the developer pays the agency commission and there is no registration trustee fee, because there is no title transfer yet. On resale you fund the commission yourself and you meet a trustee fee. A page that gives you one blended percentage has charged you for a transaction you are not making, or failed to charge you for one you are.

• Off-plan, in cash: a little over 4% of the price. The 4% Land Department registration, an AED 10 knowledge fee, an AED 10 innovation fee, and whatever administration charge the developer sets on top.
• Resale, in cash: about 6% to 7% of the price before the developer no-objection fee, and closer to 8% once a mortgage adds its own registration, arrangement and valuation costs.
• The 4% is not a buyer tax by law. Article 3(1) of Executive Council Resolution No. (30) of 2013 makes it payable 2% by the seller and 2% by the purchaser unless the parties agree otherwise. The buyer absorbing all four points is Dubai market convention. We have yet to find a competitor page in this market that says so.
• Since 1 February 2025, UAE banks no longer lend against the 4% or the 2% commission. Both are cash on top of your deposit. That is documented bank practice, reported consistently by The National, Khaleej Times and Gulf News, and not a published Central Bank circular. We will not tell you otherwise.

Our report is free, needs no account, and nobody calls you unless you ask for a call.

A total is less useful than a calendar. Most buyers who get into trouble on cost were not wrong about the total, they were wrong about the week.

Off-plan. A booking amount at reservation, set by the developer and not by any tariff. Then the sale and purchase agreement, and at or around that point the developer registers the sale on the Oqood portal and the 4% falls due. Then the instalments in your payment plan. Then handover, when service charges, cooling and utilities begin.

The 4% falls once, at Oqood registration, not at handover. This page previously said the opposite, and the opposite is wrong in the most expensive direction: it tells a buyer that a five-figure charge is years away when it is due at signature. There is no second 4% when the Oqood entry converts to a title deed. The Land Department prices initial registration once, and prices title deed issuance separately at AED 250 with no percentage component.

Resale. A deposit at contract, then the developer no-objection certificate, then a single transfer day at a registration trustee centre where the price balance, the 4%, the trustee fee, the fixed Land Department charges and the commission are all settled together. A resale buyer needs the whole fee stack in cleared funds on one day.

One timing detail that catches remote buyers. The Land Department fully digital transfer through Dubai Now is limited to individuals holding a UAE ID, so a non-resident must attend a trustee centre in person or act through an attorney-in-fact.

The Dubai Land Department charges 4% of the value of the sale contract to register a property sale. The rate is unchanged since Executive Council Resolution No. (30) of 2013 and applies to off-plan and resale alike.

Article 3(1) of that resolution makes the fee payable 2% by the seller and 2% by the purchaser, unless the parties agree otherwise. The buyer paying the whole 4% is market convention, not law. In practice almost every Dubai contract puts all four points on the buyer, and on a developer sale it is rarely negotiable. On a resale between two private parties it is a term like any other, and knowing that the instrument starts from a split changes what you can reasonably ask for.

Ranked pages in this market state the split backwards, give the 4% without ever saying who pays it, or state it both ways two paragraphs apart on the same page. If a broker tells you the law requires you to pay 4%, they are wrong, and you now have the citation.

A related claim you will meet: that the Land Department charges the 4% on the sale price or its own assessment, whichever is higher. The resolution says 4% of the value of the sale contract. Nothing we could find supports the whichever-is-higher rule, and nothing expressly rules it out either, so we state the resolution and stop there.

Some developers advertise that they will absorb part or all of the 4% as a launch incentive. Treat that as a discount to verify in the payment schedule, not as a fee that has disappeared. Ask whether the advertised price is quoted before or after the 4%, in writing.

The conventional Dubai agency commission is 2% of the price plus 5% VAT. It is set in Contract A on the seller side and Contract B on the buyer side under RERA rules, and there is no published RERA tariff behind it. It is a contract term, which means it is negotiable, and every page that calls 2% the standard or mandatory rate is both wrong and wrong in a direction that costs you money.

On off-plan you do not pay it. The developer pays the brokerage out of its own margin. If anyone asks a buyer for commission on a direct developer purchase, ask what it is for and ask to see it in your own contract.

On resale you do pay it, in cash. Since February 2025 banks no longer lend against it, so it sits alongside the 4% as money that cannot go into the loan.

The 5% VAT on the commission is real, and a residential owner cannot recover it. That follows from how residential property is treated for VAT, which is set out further down this page.

Off-plan sales are registered by the developer on the Oqood portal, which writes the unit into the Interim Real Property Register. The Land Department publishes the charge for initial sale registration as 2% seller share, 2% purchaser share, an AED 10 knowledge fee, an AED 10 innovation fee, and an AED 1,000 developer self-registration fee. Published service time is one business day.

There is no published Land Department Oqood tariff as a flat amount, and this page used to print one. It printed two, in fact, in the same file. Both are deleted. The figure that circulates across the Dubai market as an Oqood fee is a developer administration charge with VAT added, not a government tariff, and no developer schedule we could reach publishes a base amount behind it.

So the honest instruction is: ask the developer, in writing, before you sign, what its administration or registration charge is and what it covers. Put the answer in the payment schedule. A guide that hands you a number here is inventing your budget for you, and inventing it low.

The output of a completed sale registration is an Electronic Title Deed and an Electronic Map. Until handover an off-plan buyer holds an Oqood entry in the interim register, not a title deed, and the two are not interchangeable for anything that asks for a title deed.

A resale transfer completes at a registration trustee centre, which is a private service partner and not the Land Department itself. The Land Department publishes the trustee fee as AED 4,000 plus VAT where the sale value is AED 500,000 or more, and AED 2,000 plus VAT below AED 500,000.

We print the base figures with "plus VAT" because that is what is published. The VAT-inclusive totals that circulate everywhere are somebody arithmetic rather than a tariff, and the version of this page you may have read showed one of them and then charged VAT on it a second time. Note also that a sale at exactly AED 500,000 falls in the upper band, not in both: read any table that says otherwise with suspicion.

On top of the trustee fee, the fixed Land Department charges on a resale apartment come to AED 520, being AED 250 for the title deed certificate, AED 250 for the unit map, an AED 10 knowledge fee and an AED 10 innovation fee.

You will see an AED 580 title deed figure quoted across this market. It appears on no Land Department fee page. The published title deed issuance fee is AED 250.

For a UAE ID holder buying a resale unit free of mortgage and restrictions, the Land Department also runs a fully digital channel through Dubai Now, where the service partner fee is AED 1,000 plus VAT at or above AED 500,000 and AED 500 plus VAT below it, with knowledge and innovation fees of AED 30 each rather than AED 10. The transfer cancels automatically if it is not signed within seven days. A non-resident cannot use this channel.

A resale in a freehold area cannot register without an electronic no-objection certificate from the developer or master developer. The Land Department lists it among the required documents. It confirms that service charges are paid up and that the developer does not object to the transfer.

By convention the seller obtains it and pays for it, and by convention is not the same as by rule. Your interest in it is timing and arrears, not the fee. The certificate will not issue while service charges are outstanding or while a mortgage sits unredeemed on the unit, so a balance you did not create can hold your transfer date. Ask for the arrears position and the most recent service charge statement before you set a transfer day.

We publish no range for the developer no-objection fee. The figures quoted in this market run across an order of magnitude with no authoritative source behind any of them, and a tenfold range is not budgeting guidance. Ask the developer for its own figure and get it in writing. The same applies to developer administration charges on an assignment.

Where the seller has a mortgage, the seller bank charges its own fees, and those are capped by the Central Bank: AED 150 for a mortgage no objection certificate, AED 85 for a liability letter and AED 95 for a clearance letter, all before VAT.

Financing adds four line items, and the first two are published figures rather than estimates.

• Mortgage registration at the Land Department: 0.25% of the mortgage value, plus AED 250 for title deed issuance, plus an AED 10 knowledge fee and an AED 10 innovation fee for each drawing. The 0.25% is statutory under Executive Council Resolution No. (30) of 2013; the riders come from the Land Department own mortgage registration service page. Most guides print the 0.25% and drop the rest.
• The bank arrangement fee, around 1% of the loan plus VAT. It is market practice and it is negotiable. The Central Bank fee schedule does not cap it, so any page telling you a 1% regulatory cap exists is describing a rule that is not there.
• The bank valuation. HSBC publishes AED 2,625 including VAT for its own applicants. That is one named bank published fee, not a market rate, and we will not build a range around it.
• Insurance. Lenders require life and property cover in practice. The Central Bank regulation requires the insurance requirement to be disclosed, which is not the same as making cover a legal obligation, and we have no sourced premium figures to give you.

Two Central Bank caps worth knowing, because they are almost never printed correctly. Early or partial settlement of a home loan is capped at 1% of the outstanding balance or AED 10,000, whichever is less, before VAT. The "whichever is less" half is the part everyone drops, and dropping it makes the cap look far worse than it is on a small loan. The late payment fee on a home loan is capped at AED 700.

The loan-to-value caps, the debt burden ratio and the full cash build are in our Dubai mortgage guide. Its conclusion and this page agree: an expatriate resident buying a first home to live in at the 80% cap assembles roughly 26% of the price in cash once the deposit, the 4%, the 2% plus VAT and the fixed fees are added.

There is no calculator on this page. The arithmetic is short, and showing it as percentages and published amounts means you can run it on your own price rather than on ours. Every input below is a published figure.

Stack one: off-plan, a one-bedroom at AED 1,200,000, direct from the developer.

• Land Department registration: 4% of the price, AED 48,000, due once at Oqood registration around signature of the sale and purchase agreement.
• Knowledge fee AED 10 and innovation fee AED 10.
• Developer administration or registration charge: developer-set. Obtain it in writing before signing. We publish no figure.
• Agency commission to the selling brokerage: none. The developer pays it.
• Registration trustee fee: none. There is no title transfer at this stage.

That is a little over 4% of the price in cash, plus the developer charge, with the 4% landing early and the instalments following your payment plan.

Stack two: resale, the same one-bedroom at AED 1,200,000, bought without a mortgage.

• Land Department transfer fee: 4% of the price, AED 48,000, due on transfer day.
• Agency commission: 2% plus 5% VAT, AED 25,200, by contract and negotiable.
• Registration trustee fee: AED 4,000 plus VAT, because the sale value is at or above AED 500,000.
• Fixed Land Department charges: AED 520.
• Developer no-objection fee: developer-set, conventionally a seller cost. Confirm who is paying it in your contract.

That is about 6% to 7% of the price in cash, effectively all of it due on one day. Add a mortgage and you also add 0.25% of the loan plus AED 250 plus AED 10 plus AED 10, around 1% of the loan plus VAT as an arrangement fee, and the bank valuation, which takes a mortgaged resale purchase closer to 8% of the price in fees before the deposit.

Why we no longer publish one blended number. The version of this page you may have read ran a single example labelled off-plan, then billed a buyer agency commission the same page said the developer pays on off-plan, then added a trustee fee that only attaches to a resale transfer. It was a transaction nobody can enter, and its total contradicted the headline percentage printed twice elsewhere in the same guide. Two stacks, kept apart, is the fix.

DEWA connection requires a refundable security deposit and a connection charge. We have no current published schedule for either and will not guess at one, so treat this as a line to confirm with DEWA at handover rather than a line to budget from this page.

Cooling is the charge that surprises people, and the first question is which of three regimes your building is in. Chiller-free means cooling sits inside the service charge. Chiller-paid means you pay the utility directly. District cooling means a third-party operator bills you a capacity charge whether or not you are in the apartment, which is why a vacant unit on district cooling still costs money every month.

There is no Dubai-wide district cooling rate, and anyone quoting one is guessing. Tariffs are approved per scheme by the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy and listed in Schedule 3 of the operator permit. The Regulatory and Supervisory Bureau regulation RD10, Regulation on the Approval of District Cooling Tariffs, Charges and Fees, version 1.4, effective 6 February 2026, provides that only the tariffs, charges and fees expressly identified and authorised in it may be levied, and that all approved tariffs must be clearly disclosed to the customer. Its published caps include an activation fee of AED 200 per unit, a re-connection fee of AED 500 per unit, a late payment fee of AED 100 per billing cycle, and a deposit of at most eight months of capacity charges.

So ask for the approved tariff for your specific scheme before you buy. It is a document that exists, and the operator is required to disclose it.

Service charges are the largest recurring cost of owning a Dubai apartment, and we publish no per-square-foot range, because we have no sourced rates. Every band circulating in this market, including the ones this page used to print under invented tier labels, traces to nobody. What we publish instead is the check, and it is better than a range, because it gives you the figure for your building rather than for a category somebody made up.

The Dubai Land Department Service Charge Index lets anyone look up the RERA-approved service charge for a specific jointly owned building before purchase, free of charge, and without being a resident. It runs through the Mollak system on the Land Department website and through the Dubai REST app, returns results immediately, and is open to residents and non-residents alike. The lookup is by project name, use and year.

The sequence, which you can execute from anywhere:

• Take the exact building name and the unit suite area from the title deed, the Oqood or the sale and purchase agreement. Never from the listing.
• Look the building up in the Service Charge Index and multiply the approved rate by the area.
• Check that against the seller most recent service charge statement and the arrears position on the unit.
• Establish whether the building is chiller-free, chiller-paid or on district cooling, and if it is on district cooling, ask for the approved capacity tariff for that scheme.
• Check the Smart Rental Index benchmark for that building in the RERA rent calculator.
• Ask for the reserve fund position. A thin reserve fund is a future special levy.

Service charges are standard-rated at 5% VAT, because they are consideration for running the communal areas rather than the supply of a home, and a residential owner cannot recover that VAT. Any yield working that ignores it is flattering itself.

Our Dubai service charge calculator is the one tool of this kind we operate. Use it alongside the Land Department lookup, not instead of it.

Some costs are real and unquantified, and saying so is more useful than filling the gap.

• Developer or owners association move-in and fit-out deposits. Charged by many buildings and refundable in principle, with no published aggregate figure. Ask the building manager.
• Chiller or district cooling connection and activation. RD10 caps an activation fee at AED 200 per unit for the schemes it covers, but connection arrangements differ per building.
• Conveyancing. Optional in Dubai, not compulsory, and any page telling you it is unavoidable is selling you something. Agree the fee in writing in advance. We publish no range.
• Snagging and handover inspection on an off-plan unit. Real, at your discretion, and priced by the market rather than by tariff.

Where a published source exists we print the figure and name it. Where it does not, we tell you which document or counterparty holds the answer. A range invented to fill a gap is worse than a gap, because you will budget against it.

There is no VAT on the price of the apartment you are buying. The first supply of a residential building, by sale or lease, is zero-rated if made within three years of completion, and any subsequent supply is exempt. The 5% VAT you see on this page attaches to services: the agency commission, the trustee fee, the service charge, a conveyancer. It never attaches to the purchase price itself. Zero-rated and exempt are not the same thing, and the difference is that on an exempt supply the owner cannot recover VAT incurred on related costs.

Dubai levies no annual property tax on capital value, and no personal income tax on rent for an individual owner. That is a true statement about the UAE, and it is not the same as tax-free. A buyer meets the 4% transfer fee at purchase, a 5% municipality housing fee on residential occupation, and 5% VAT on services that a residential owner cannot recover.

The 5% municipality housing fee is billed to the occupant through DEWA, at 5% of the yearly rent, monthly. If you let the apartment, your tenant pays it, it is not a landlord operating cost, and it must never be subtracted in a yield calculation for a let unit. If you live in the apartment yourself, budget for a municipality housing fee and confirm the basis with Dubai Municipality: no official page we could reach sets out how it is assessed for an owner-occupier, so we compute no figure.

One more thing that belongs on an honest costs page. A UAE account receiving rent is a financial account. The UAE participates in FATCA and the Common Reporting Standard, has done since 2017, and has committed to CRS 2.0 from 1 January 2027 with the first exchange under it in 2028. Whether your rental income or your gain is taxable where you live is a question for that country rules and for your own adviser. We do not answer it.

Holding a Dubai apartment through a company changes the picture. A non-resident juridical person earning income from UAE immovable property has a nexus in the State and must register with the Federal Tax Authority. A non-resident natural person does not. If you are considering a corporate structure, price the compliance before you price the apartment.

This is the cost that most often surprises a buyer in our band, because the sales conversation never covers it.

Selling an off-plan unit before handover is an assignment: a developer no-objection certificate first, then an Oqood-to-Oqood transfer at a registration trustee office. Without the developer certificate the Land Department will not process the transfer, so the developer effectively controls whether and when you can exit.

On the Land Department side, amending an entry in the Interim Real Property Register costs AED 250 per unit, and the 4% is charged on the new sale price at the Oqood transfer. On the developer side there is an administration or transfer charge that is not standardised and for which no authoritative range exists. Ask before you buy, not when you want out.

Most developers also require a share of the price to be paid before they will issue a no-objection certificate for a resale. That share is set in your sale and purchase agreement, not by the Land Department. You will see specific percentages quoted confidently across this market. They trace to broker guides quoting each other rather than to any instrument, and the real number is in your own contract. Read it before you sign, because it decides how liquid your position is.

And the risk that runs the other way. If you stop paying, Law No. (19) of 2017 lets the developer terminate after notifying the Land Department and after a 30-day notice served on you, and retain up to 40% of the value of the unit where completion is 60% or above, or up to 25% of the value of the unit below 60% where work has commenced. Those are percentages of the unit value stated in the agreement, not of what you have paid. A buyer who has paid 20% of the price and stops while completion is under 60% can lose everything paid, because 25% of the price exceeds the total handed over. The statutory figures are ceilings, so the operative number is whatever your own agreement sets beneath them.

If the plan is to rent the unit out, four costs attach that a purchase-cost page usually omits.

• Ejari registration is mandatory, and cheap. Through the Land Department website or the Dubai REST app the total is AED 177.75: AED 100 registration, an AED 10 knowledge fee, an AED 10 innovation fee, an AED 55 service partner fee and AED 2.75 of VAT. At a Real Estate Trustee Centre it is AED 220. Those are the only three channels; typing centres are not one of them. Registration matters because judicial authorities may not hear a dispute on an unregistered lease.
• Letting agency commission, set by contract in the same way as a sale commission, plus 5% VAT.
• Property management, if you are not in Dubai, priced by contract.
• The municipality housing fee is your tenant cost, not yours. A landlord who has let the unit does not pay it.

A landlord is separately prohibited from charging a tenant a lease renewal fee. The Ejari government registration charge is a government charge, and it is not a landlord renewal fee.

One rule changes what a tenanted unit is worth to you: a sitting tenant rent is capped on renewal by Decree No. (43) of 2013, whatever market rents are doing. Our rental yields guide works through the method and the benchmark.

Most of the stack is statutory and fixed. Three parts are not.

• The agency commission on a resale. It is a contract term, it is the largest genuinely negotiable line in the stack, and the 2% convention is not a rule.
• The bank arrangement fee. Around 1% of the loan plus VAT is market practice, not a cap and not a tariff. Banks discount it, particularly where the rest of the relationship is worth something to them.
• The allocation of the 4%. On a private resale, Article 3(1) starts from a 2% and 2% split. What you can achieve depends on the market and on the seller, but it is a conversation the instrument supports, and almost no buyer here knows it exists.

What does not reduce your cost: paying a developer administration charge without asking what it is, buying two small units instead of one at the same total budget, since every fixed line in the stack is then charged twice and you may drop below the AED 2,000,000 property threshold for the Golden Visa route, or choosing a building on its service charge alone without checking the reserve fund.

The Dubai First-Time Home Buyer Programme, launched on 2 July 2025, is worth checking if you are a UAE resident of any nationality, aged 18 or over, who does not already own freehold residential property in Dubai and is buying below AED 5,000,000. It does not waive or discount the Land Department registration fee, whatever you may have read. What it offers is relaxed payment terms for those fees through eligible credit cards with interest-free instalments. A non-resident does not qualify.

A costs guide that itemises everybody else and omits its own author is inverted, so here is ours. Both stacks above are money you pay to other people. What follows is money you pay us, and it sits on top of either one.

• The underwriting report is free. No account, no payment, and no sign-up wall on this page or any other guide, and it is not credited against anything you pay us later.
• Representation is paid by you: AED 30,000, including VAT, in three stages. The same schedule applies on off-plan and on resale. AED 6,000, including VAT, to begin the search. AED 12,000, including VAT, on the reservation form or the sale and purchase agreement off-plan, or the Form F MOU on resale. AED 12,000, including VAT, on registration at the Land Department, the Oqood off-plan and the title transfer on resale.
• Where a developer pays us a commission, we receive it and rebate it to you in full. We take the commission rather than decline it, and then hand it over, which is why nothing we earn depends on which project you buy and why the verdict in the report can say do not buy.
• Two fixed-fee administrative services are published with their amounts and their scope on our services page, which is the single place any Oliva fee is stated. If a fee is not published there, we do not charge it.

Where our work stops. Oliva is a RERA-licensed brokerage, not a RERA-registered valuer. This is analysis of transaction evidence, not a valuation, and it cannot be used where a valuation is required. Where you genuinely need one, the Land Department runs the official route itself and issues a Real Estate Evaluation e-Certificate: for a residential apartment the fee is AED 4,000 plus AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation fees, with an AED 230 service partner fee plus VAT at a service centre, and the result is instant for residential units. RERA accredits valuation companies and the Land Department publishes the accredited list, so you can check a firm before you instruct it.

The service charge sequence above covers the recurring costs. Four more checks cover the one-off ones, and all four are free.

• The 4% and the fixed charges: the Land Department property sale registration service page. Read the page rather than the brochure.
• The developer administration or Oqood charge, and the no-objection fee: in writing from the developer, before signature, in the payment schedule.
• The commission and who pays it: in Contract B, in writing, before you view anything.
• The broker: that the brokerage and the agent are RERA-registered, and that any advert you rely on carries its permit number.

If a number cannot be verified from one of those places, it is not a budget line yet. It is somebody estimate.

• Decide off-plan or resale first. The two stacks differ and no blended percentage is true of both.
• Off-plan: a little over 4% in cash, due around signature, plus a developer administration charge obtained in writing.
• Resale: about 6% to 7% in cash without a mortgage, closer to 8% with one, effectively all due on a single transfer day.
• The 4% is payable 2% and 2% under Article 3(1) of Executive Council Resolution No. (30) of 2013 unless the parties agree otherwise. Convention puts it all on you. Know the difference.
• If you are borrowing, the 4% and the 2% are cash. Since February 2025 no UAE bank lends against them.
• Look up the building service charge in the Land Department Service Charge Index before you make an offer, not after.
• Get the developer administration charge, the no-objection fee, the assignment terms and the cooling tariff in writing. All four are unpublished, and all four are askable.