RERA, Ejari & Oqood Explained: Registering Commercial Leases and Off-Plan Purchases in Dubai

The Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA) is the regulatory arm of the Dubai Land Department, and it is the body with which lease contracts must be registered under the emirate's tenancy law. Almost every registration step in this cluster — lease registration, off-plan protection, service-charge approval — sits under DLD and RERA rather than under the licensing authorities you deal with elsewhere in a property project. That division matters: the same warehouse can need a DET or free zone licence, a Civil Defence sign-off and a DLD registration, and confusing which body owns which step is the most common cause of avoidable delay. The wider map of who regulates what is set out in the legal, tax and ownership hub for Dubai commercial property.

Yes, and the amended definitions make the point more directly than the original ones. Article 2 of Law No. 26 of 2007, as superseded by Law No. 33 of 2008, defines "Real Property" as "Immovable property, and everything attached or annexed to it, which is leased out for residential purposes or for practising any commercial activity, trade, profession, or other lawful activity." Article 3, also superseded, provides that "The provisions of this Law will apply to land and Real Property leased out in the Emirate, excluding Real Property provided free of Rent by natural or legal persons as accommodation for their employees."

Two things are worth flagging for anyone comparing this against an older guide. First, "practising any commercial activity" replaced the 2007 formulation "conducting a business activity", which if anything widens the commercial reach. Second, the 2007 Article 3 carved out hotel establishments; the 2008 replacement does not carry that exclusion forward, and the only exclusion left on its face is staff accommodation provided free of rent. If you are underwriting a hospitality-adjacent asset, that is a question for a UAE-qualified lawyer rather than an assumption to make from a guide.

Nothing in either article turns on whether the tenant is an individual or a company. Offices, retail units, showrooms, warehouses, light-industrial premises and bare land leases are inside the regime. If you are structuring a holding entity or weighing where you can own rather than lease, read this alongside freehold and leasehold ownership rules for Dubai commercial property.

The amended Article 4 is short. Article 4(1) provides that "The contractual relationship between a Landlord and a Tenant will be regulated by a Lease Contract which includes a description of the leased Real Property that leaves no room for uncertainty; the purpose of the lease; the term of the Lease Contract; the Rent and its payment method; and the name of the Real Property owner if the Landlord is not the owner." Article 4(2) provides that "All Lease Contracts related to Real Property which is governed by the provisions of this Law, and any amendments thereto, will be registered with RERA."

That is the whole of it. Note what the amended particulars list does and does not require: a description leaving no room for uncertainty, the purpose, the term, the rent and its payment method, and the owner's name where the landlord is not the owner. The 2007 version also demanded the land number and type and the area where the property is located; the 2008 replacement drops those and adds the owner-identification point instead. A vague demise or an undefined rent-step schedule is still a drafting risk, but it is a risk under the first limb of the amended article, not under a list of cadastral particulars.

Less than most guides tell you, on the face of the current legislation — and this is the correction most worth carrying into a negotiation.

The 2007 original Article 4(2) contained a second sentence: judicial authorities and government departments, authorities and corporations "may not consider any dispute or claim or otherwise take any action" relating to an unregistered lease. That sentence is quoted everywhere. It is not in the replacement Article 4(2) enacted by Law No. 33 of 2008, which stops at the registration requirement.

Nor is it reproduced in the obvious successor instrument. Decree No. 26 of 2013 establishes the Rent Disputes Settlement Centre, and its Article 6 gives the Centre "the exclusive jurisdiction to ... determine all Rent Disputes that arise between Landlords and Tenants of Real Property situated in the Emirate, including in free zones, and counterclaims arising therefrom", together with interim and urgent relief, appeals and enforcement. Article 6(b) removes jurisdiction over three categories only: rent disputes inside free zones that have their own tribunals or special courts, disputes arising from a lease finance contract, and disputes from long-term lease contracts covered by Law No. 7 of 2006. Registration with RERA is not among the conditions Article 6 imposes.

So the honest position is this. Registration is a statutory obligation on the face of Article 4(2), and in practice an Ejari certificate is demanded across a range of counters — licensing, utilities, visa processing — so an unregistered lease will obstruct the business long before any dispute arises. What the current legislation does not support is the specific claim that a court or a government department is barred from acting. If a landlord or an adviser tells you that unregistered means unenforceable, ask them which provision in force says so. Treat registration as commercially essential and legally required, and do not rely on the bar as leverage.

Three further points from Decree No. 26 of 2013 are worth knowing before you budget for a commercial rent dispute. The Centre's Mediation and Conciliation Directorate is required to seek an amicable settlement "within a period not exceeding fifteen (15) days from the date of appearance of the parties before it", extendable by the supervising judge, and half the registration fee is refunded if that settlement is reached. Tribunals must determine claims referred to them "within a period not exceeding thirty (30) days from the date of referral of the claim file to them", again extendable. And judgments in rent claims worth less than AED 100,000 are final and not subject to appeal, save in six listed cases including eviction judgments and breaches of the rules of jurisdiction. For a small commercial tenancy, that AED 100,000 threshold is a real strategic fact.

Rent review and exit mechanics sit outside registration but are decided in the same negotiation — see Dubai commercial landlord and tenant law on rent increases, eviction and deposits, and the Dubai rental index tool for benchmarking the rent itself.

DLD publishes two totals for registering or renewing a tenancy contract — AED 177.75 online and AED 220 in person — with the difference sitting entirely in the service partner fee.

Dubai Land Department's Register/Renew Ejari Tenancy Contract e-service states a service time of "25 minutes (excluding waiting time)" at a trustee centre, requires the "Original Unified Tenancy Contract" and the applicant's Emirates ID, and issues an e-contract registration certificate on completion.

The conditions matter more than the AED 42.25 difference, and one of them is genuinely unresolved on DLD's published page. The app route is stated to require that both parties are individuals, yet the same page's document list for that route refers to a copy of the unified tenancy contract "for individuals and companies only". Those two statements cannot both be doing the work they appear to do, and DLD publishes nothing else that settles which channel a company-to-company commercial tenancy should use. This guide does not guess: confirm the corporate route with DLD or a trustee centre in writing before you plan a completion around it.

What is clearer is the trustee-centre condition, which excludes property "managed by a real estate company or by an owner who has Ejari system access". Most institutional commercial stock in Dubai is managed by exactly such a company or owner, which points away from the counter and towards direct system registration by the manager. Ask who holds system access early, because the answer determines who can physically do the registration you are relying on. Transaction-cost planning across a whole acquisition is easier with the Dubai buying costs calculator, and the portal mechanics themselves are covered in Dubai REST, DubaiNow, Ejari & DET. Ejari also sits on the critical path for premises licensing — see office Ejari and signage requirements.

Check registration responsibility, the Article 4(1) particulars, and the service-charge allocation — in that order, before signature rather than after.

• Name who registers, and by when. Put a deadline and a named party in the contract, with the registration certificate as a condition of the first rent payment being treated as unconditional.
• Test the amended Article 4(1) particulars. An unambiguous description of the premises, the purpose, the term, the rent and its payment method, and the owner's name where the landlord is not the owner.
• Match the stated purpose to your licence. The permitted use in the lease and the activity on your trade licence need to be the same thing, or you will discover the mismatch at a licensing counter.
• Ask who holds Ejari system access. If the landlord's manager holds it, registration is theirs to do — get that in writing.
• Read the service-charge clause against Article 16 of Law No. 6 of 2019 (below) if you are the owner.
• Confirm current fees on DLD's page on the day, not from a guide. Government fees are revised periodically.
• Cite the amending law, not just the article number, in any correspondence that turns on a statutory provision.

Oqood is the registration route by which off-plan sales are entered in DLD's Interim Property Register, and an unregistered off-plan sale is legally void. Article 2 of Law No. 13 of 2008, as superseded by Law No. 9 of 2009, defines the Interim Property Register as "The documents maintained by the Department in written or electronic format in an electronic record in which sale contracts, Off-plan Sales, and other off-plan legal dispositions of real property are registered prior to inclusion in the Property Register." Article 3, which has not been amended, provides that "Any disposition that occurs in respect of any Real Property Unit sold off-plan will be entered in the Interim Property Register, and any sale or any other legal disposition that transfers or restricts ownership or any ancillary rights will be void unless entered in that Register."

The register does real work beyond record-keeping, and Articles 4, 5, 7 and 8 all stand as originally enacted:

• Article 4 bars a master developer or sub-developer from commencing a project or selling units off-plan "before taking possession of the land on which the project will be implemented and obtaining the required approvals from the Competent Entities in the Emirate."
• Article 5 requires the application to enter a unit to be submitted "on the form prepared for such purpose" with all required information and documents — in practice a developer-side step.
• Article 7 prohibits charging "any fees on the sale, resale, or on any other legal disposition" of a unit "except those administrative costs which are approved by the Department". This is the provision to cite when an unexplained transfer or NOC charge appears.
• Article 8 is the conversion mechanism, and it runs in two limbs. The first is a duty on the developer: developers "must enter completed projects in the Property Register maintained by the Department once they receive the completion certificate from the Competent Entities", including "entering sold Units in the name of purchasers who fulfilled their contractual obligations". The second is a power in the Department: "For the purposes of this Article, the Department may, either upon the request of the purchaser or upon its own initiative, register in the Property Register in the name of the purchaser a Real Property Unit entered in the Interim Property Register which was sold off-plan, provided that the purchaser fulfilled all his contractual obligations."

That second limb is the one to hold on to. A buyer who has paid in full and met every contractual obligation, facing a developer who will not process the transfer after completion, is not confined to suing the developer to perform its duty under the first limb. He can apply to DLD directly, and DLD may register the unit in his name — and may do so on its own initiative. The word is "may", so it is a power rather than an entitlement, and the condition attached to it is that the purchaser has fulfilled all his obligations. That makes your own payment and documentation record the thing to keep in order.

DLD publishes the fee lines on its "Request to register the initial sale" e-service, which it describes as allowing "a real estate developer to register units sold off-plan or land plots whose value has not been fully paid at the provisional register".

Dubai Land Department's Request to register the initial sale e-service states the service channel is "The Land Department's website (Real Estate Developers Portal - Oqood)", the stated service time is a business day, and the terms state that "The sale and purchase contract shall be registered in the provisional register within 90 days from the date of signing the contract".

Two practical notes. First, the statutory split is 2% and 2%, but who actually bears the 4% is a matter of negotiation and market convention rather than law, so read the reservation form and the SPA rather than assuming. Second, the 90-day window is the number to diarise: it is the developer's obligation, but it is your interest that goes unregistered if it slips. Ask for the DLD receipt and the Oqood entry, not a developer-issued confirmation letter, and ask before the 90 days run rather than after. For the commercial buying sequence around this step, see how to buy off-plan property in Dubai.

Escrow applies to commercial off-plan schemes, not just residential ones. Article 2 of Law No. 8 of 2007 defines real estate development as "Projects for the construction of residential or commercial multiple storey buildings or compounds" — commercial is written into the definition rather than carved out of it. Article 4 requires the Department to maintain a "Register of Real Estate Developers" and provides that no developer may engage in the business "unless he is recorded in that register and licensed by the Competent Entities in accordance with their relevant requirements".

Article 6 lists eight documents a developer must file to open an escrow account: Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry membership, a trade licence, the title deed of the land to be developed, a copy of any master-developer/sub-developer contract, initial architectural designs and engineering plans approved by the competent entities and the master developer, a financial statement of estimated cost and revenues certified by an accredited chartered auditor, an undertaking to start construction works on approval for off-plan sale, and a standard sale contract between the developer and the purchaser.

Two later articles carry the buyer protection. Article 14 requires the escrow agent to retain 5% of the total value of each escrow account once the developer obtains the completion certificate, with the retained amount released "one (1) year from the registration of Units in the name of purchasers". Article 15 requires the agent, where a project is not completed in an emergency situation, to act "after consultation with the Department" and "take the required measures to preserve the rights of depositors, and ensure that the Real Estate Development project is completed, or depositors are refunded their payments". The Dubai Legislation portal page for Law No. 8 of 2007 notes no amendments.

This is the provision that has moved most, and the 30% deduction still quoted across the market appears nowhere in the text in force. Article 11 of Law No. 13 of 2008 was superseded by Law No. 9 of 2009, then by Law No. 19 of 2017, then by Law No. 19 of 2020, which is the text in force.

It is worth tracing that figure properly, because the usual shorthand — that 30% is simply an old number — understates how recently it was law. In the 2008 original it was the general rule: on any purchaser breach the developer could "revoke the contract and refund the purchaser after deducting up to thirty percent (30%) of the payments made by the purchaser". Law No. 9 of 2009 replaced that with a sliding scale and confined 30% to a single limb — where the developer, "for reasons beyond his control but without any negligence on his part, fails to start the construction works", he could "retain a maximum of thirty percent (30%) of the payments made by the purchaser". Law No. 19 of 2017 carried the same limb forward in almost the same words. Law No. 19 of 2020 deleted it: where the developer has not commenced work for a reason beyond his control, or RERA cancels the project by final reasoned decision, the developer now "must refund all payments made by the purchasers". So a 30% cap of some description was live Dubai law from 2008 until 24 November 2020, and the change that removed it went in the buyer's favour. Anyone quoting 30% today is quoting a rule that was superseded by the most recent amendment, not a rule that has been dead since 2008.

Under the current Article 11, a developer cannot simply cancel. The sequence is procedural first:

1. The developer must notify DLD of the purchaser's non-performance, on the form DLD prescribes, with the details of both parties, a description of the unit and "a detailed account of the contractual obligations breached by the purchaser".
2. DLD must serve a thirty (30) days' notice on the purchaser requiring performance. It must be in writing, dated, and delivered in person, by registered mail with acknowledgement of receipt, by email, or by any other means DLD prescribes.
3. DLD must, where possible, mediate an amicable settlement, which is then attached as an addendum to the off-plan sale agreement and executed by both parties.
4. If the notice expires without performance or settlement, DLD issues an official document confirming the developer's compliance with the procedure and "the percentage of completion of the Real Property project ... calculated in accordance with the relevant standards and rules adopted by RERA".

Only then may the developer act, and what it may do depends on that certified percentage:

Where the developer terminates and retains, it must refund the excess "within one (1) year from the termination of the Off-plan Sale agreement or within sixty (60) days from the date of resale of the Real Property Unit to another purchaser, whichever occurs earlier."

Four features of the 2020 text matter commercially. The retention caps are calculated against the value of the unit stipulated in the agreement, not against what you have paid — on an early-stage payment plan a 25% cap can exceed everything you have handed over, so model it against the contract price rather than the instalments. The completion percentage is now measured on the project, where the 2017 version measured it on the unit. The rules "apply to all Off-plan Sale agreements concluded prior to or after the effective date of this Law", are "considered part of public order", and "failure to comply therewith will result in nullity of the legal act in question" — so a cancellation that skips the DLD notice step is vulnerable. And paragraph (g) preserves your recourse: the article "will not preclude the purchaser from having recourse to courts or arbitration", with no requirement to show abuse first, which the 2017 version had imposed.

Where the problem is delay rather than cancellation, the practical playbook is set out in what to do about delayed Dubai off-plan handovers.

The owner remains liable for service and usage charges to the management entity even when the lease puts them on the tenant. Article 16 of Law No. 6 of 2019 provides that "Unless otherwise stipulated in the Unit lease agreement, the Owner will be liable to pay the Service Charges and Usage Charges", and continues: "In all events, the Owner may not be discharged from his liability to pay the Service Charges and Usage Charges if the tenant fails to pay the same as prescribed under this Law."

Two neighbouring articles are useful leverage for owners. Article 27 prohibits a management entity from charging or collecting anything from owners for the management, operation, maintenance or repair of common parts or common facilities, "or for any other reason, without first obtaining the relevant approval of RERA" — and adds that RERA "may not approve or ratify the Service Charges or Usage Charges budget unless it is approved by a certified audit firm recognised by RERA for this purpose". An unapproved or unaudited charge is challengeable. Article 30 requires the management entity to hold a service charges account for each jointly owned property with a bank licensed in the emirate and recognised by RERA, to deposit collected charges "within seven (7) working days from the date of collection", and provides that those funds "may not, for any reason whatsoever, be subject to attachment in favour of the Management Entity creditors". The portal page for Law No. 6 of 2019 notes no amendments.

For a commercial landlord the practical consequence is that tenant credit risk and service-charge exposure are the same risk. A defaulting tenant does not move your liability to the owners' association; it simply leaves you paying twice. Underwrite it in the covenant assessment, not in the lease drafting alone. The tax treatment of those recharges is a separate question — see UAE corporate tax and VAT on commercial property and, for off-plan specifically, VAT recovery on off-plan commercial property for zero-revenue startups.

Lease registration runs through the Ejari system, the Dubai REST app or a Real Estate Services Trustee Centre, on the conditions in the table above — with the corporate-channel question flagged earlier still open on DLD's published page. Off-plan registration runs developer-side through the Real Estate Developers Portal into the Interim Property Register. The walkthrough of which portal handles which task is in Dubai REST, DubaiNow, Ejari & DET: a practical guide to the government portals, and the wider regulatory map sits in the legal, tax and ownership hub.