Cost of buying
The true acquisition cost of a Dubai property at a given price: DLD transfer fee, registration, trustee, agency and mortgage costs, itemised and explained. Off-plan and ready variants, because the fee structures differ.
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Off-plan, explained
How buying a home before it is built actually works in Dubai — the plans, the protections, the risks and the decisions you make along the way.
11 articles · about 84 minutes in total
An off-plan purchase is not a smaller version of buying a finished home. You are choosing a developer, a payment structure and a date rather than a specific apartment you can stand in, and the decision plays out over three to five years instead of six weeks. Most of the anxiety we hear from first-time off-plan buyers comes from applying resale instincts to a different kind of transaction.
This pillar walks through the mechanism in the order you will meet it: what off-plan means and how it differs from ready property, how payment plans are structured and what they really cost, how escrow and Oqood registration protect your money and where that protection stops, how to judge a developer, and what happens at handover. Then the harder questions — selling before completion, service charges, delays and cancellations, and the mistakes we see most often.
None of it is gated and none of it is a sales page. Read it in order if you are new to the market; jump to the article you need if you are not. Where a rule or fee is quoted, it is the position as we currently understand it, with the date we last reviewed it, and it should be confirmed against the specific project before you sign anything.
The reading path
Read in order, or go straight to what you need.
11 articles on off-plan, in the order you will meet each question.
- 01
What off-plan actually means
Buying a home before it exists is a different transaction from buying a finished one — not a riskier version of the same thing. Here is what you are really choosing, and what you are not.
7 min read
- 02
Payment plans explained: 20/80, 60/40, 50/50 and post-handover
The two numbers in a payment plan tell you when you pay, not how much a home costs. How to read a plan structure, what post-handover really means, and how to work out what a plan is actually costing you.
8 min read
- 03
Escrow and buyer protection: what RERA Law No. 8 does and does not cover
Every dirham you pay on a registered off-plan project goes into an escrow account the developer cannot freely touch. Here is what that protects, what it does not, and how to check a project is properly registered before you pay.
8 min read
- 04
Oqood and initial registration: what it is, when it happens, what it costs
Oqood is the Land Department's interim register for off-plan sales. Your contract is recorded in your name before the building exists, and the entry becomes a title deed at handover. What to expect and when.
6 min read
- 05
How to evaluate a developer
When you buy off-plan you are buying a company's ability to finish a building. Delivery record, financial position, past delays, quality of finish — what to look at, where to find it, and what the brochure will not tell you.
8 min read
- 06
Handover and snagging: what happens at the end
The building is finished and the developer wants the final instalment. What the completion notice means, how to inspect the unit, what to do if it is not right, and what starts costing money from the day you take the keys.
8 min read
- 07
Service charges: the ongoing cost most buyers forget to model
The annual fee per square foot for the shared parts of a building is the difference between the yield in the brochure and the yield in your account. How charges are set, what they typically run to, and how to read a budget.
7 min read
- 08
Exit strategies: selling before handover, holding and letting
You can usually sell an off-plan contract before the building is finished — with the developer's consent, after a minimum share is paid, into whatever market exists at the time. The mechanics of assignment, the honest risks, and the alternatives.
8 min read
- 09
Off-plan vs ready: an honest comparison
Off-plan is not the better way to buy; it is the better way to buy for some buyers in some situations. A side-by-side on price, payments, risk, income and control — including when ready is the right answer.
8 min read
- 10
The seven most common off-plan mistakes
The same handful of errors account for most of the disappointed off-plan buyers we meet. None of them is about the developer failing. All of them are avoidable before you reserve.
7 min read
- 11
What happens if a project is delayed or cancelled
The question every off-plan buyer has and almost nobody answers in public. How delays are treated under a typical sale agreement, what RERA does when a project stalls, and how refunds work when one is cancelled.
9 min read
Related tools
Work the numbers these articles describe.
Government-set fees and your own figures, itemised. No login, no email to use them.
Yield calculator
Gross and net rental yield from a price, an expected rent, the service charge and the size — with the working shown, so you can see what sits between the advertised figure and the one you would bank.
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Handover timeline
Enter a handover quarter and see the sequence between now and then, and just after: construction-linked payments, the snagging window, handover, title deed, Ejari and the first service charge invoice.
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Compare developers
Two or three developers side by side on what we can actually stand behind: our reading of finish relative to price band, the payment-plan structure that recurs across their projects we cover, and one line from our delivery commentary. We publish no delivery statistics, because none of these developers has given us figures we can audit.
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When the reading turns into a question.
Twenty minutes with an advisor on how this applies to the property you are actually considering — drawbacks named first.