Enquiry to Handover

From First Enquiry to Title Deed

Buying off-plan feels opaque until you have seen the whole path once. It is a defined, regulated sequence, and most of the anxiety around it comes from not knowing which step you are on or what protects you at each one.

The journey has seven stages, shown below. Some are governed by hard law, the escrow account, the interim register, the 4% fee, and some are ordinary market practice that varies by developer, the deposit size, the payment split, the exact timings. This guide is careful to tell you which is which, because knowing the difference is what lets you push back when a term is negotiable and relax when it is fixed.

The Reservation and the Booking Deposit

Once you have chosen a unit, you sign a reservation form and pay a booking deposit to take it off the market. On a busy launch you may first submit an expression of interest to secure priority before units are released. The booking deposit is market practice, not a figure set in law: it commonly runs 5% to 10% of the price, and on some plans 10% to 20%. What you are buying at this point is time and priority, not yet ownership.

This is the stage with the most room to negotiate. The deposit size, the payment plan, the incentives such as a DLD-fee waiver or a post-handover plan, all of it is commercial and varies by developer and by how a launch is selling. Treat the first offer as a starting point, not a fixed price list.

What the Contract Actually Says

The Sale and Purchase Agreement is the binding contract between you and the developer. It sets out the unit specification and area, the total price, the full payment-plan schedule, the projected completion date, the project's escrow account, and the remedies if either side defaults. Read it as the single source of truth for the deal, because every timing and obligation that matters is written into it.

A developer may only sell a unit off-plan once the project is registered with the DLD and RERA and a dedicated escrow account is open. That is a legal requirement under the 2007 escrow law, not a courtesy. One common myth to drop: there is no statutory cooling-off period for a Dubai off-plan SPA. Your ability to withdraw is governed by the contract's own terms and by RERA's default procedures, so read the exit and default clauses before you sign, not after.

Oqood: Registered From the Start

This is the step that surprises people, in a good way. Under the 2008 interim-register law, as amended in 2020, the developer must register your off-plan purchase on the DLD's Interim Real Estate Register, through the system known as Oqood. The result is an Oqood certificate: government-registered proof of your claim to the specific unit, held in your name throughout construction. Registration is mandatory, and an unregistered off-plan sale is legally void.

The 4% DLD fee is paid at this stage, on the declared price. It is nominally split 2% buyer and 2% seller, but the buyer pays the full 4% by convention. Because it is paid now, there is no second 4% when the finished unit converts to a title deed later.

Your Money Is Ring-Fenced

This is the mechanism that turns off-plan from a leap of faith into a structured transaction, and it is worth understanding in full.

Every instalment you pay goes into the project's dedicated escrow account at a RERA-approved trustee bank, not into the developer's hands. The account is held in the project's name and ring-fenced from the developer's own creditors, and money is released to the developer only against construction milestones verified by an appointed engineer. Slow build means slow release, which keeps your capital tied to real progress rather than to a promise.

There is a final safeguard many buyers never hear about. Under the law, the escrow agent retains 5% of the total escrow value once the building's completion certificate is issued, and releases it only one year after the units are registered in buyers' names. It is a built-in defects guarantee, and it is one of the few hard, statutory timing figures in the whole process.

Milestone or Calendar

During construction your instalments are triggered one of two ways. A construction-linked plan releases each payment when a real building milestone is reached, so your money follows the concrete. A time-linked plan sets payments to fixed calendar dates regardless of progress. Milestone-linked is the more protective structure for a buyer, because you are paying for work that has actually been done.

The headline splits you will be offered, such as 80/20, 60/40 or 50/50, plus post-handover plans that let you keep paying after you receive the keys, are commercial terms, not legal ones. They vary by developer and by how a launch is selling, so they are negotiable. Construction itself typically runs two to four years; for any specific unit, the SPA's projected completion date is the number that matters.

From Completion to Keys in Hand

When construction finishes, the developer obtains a Building Completion Certificate from Dubai Municipality and issues you a handover notice: the unit is ready, here is the final payment, and here is the deadline, commonly 14 to 30 days under the SPA. Before you accept, you inspect the unit, a process called snagging, and the developer must rectify genuine defects, backed by that 5% escrow retention.

Once you are satisfied and the final instalment is paid, the interim Oqood registration converts to a full DLD title deed in your name. Because the 4% was paid back at the Oqood stage, only the small closing costs apply now: a title-deed issuance fee of 250 dirhams, a map fee of 250, and minor admin. You can track every step on the Dubai REST app.

The Realistic Timeline

Here is the honest end-to-end shape. Only one of these is a hard statutory number; the rest are market ranges that depend on the developer, the project and the plan, so treat them as guides, not guarantees.

The Questions Buyers Actually Ask