Power of Attorney for Buying Property in Dubai

A power of attorney is a legal document under which one person, the principal, authorises another, the agent or attorney-in-fact, to act on their behalf for a defined purpose. In a Dubai property transaction, that purpose is typically signing a sale and purchase agreement, executing transfer documents, and attending a Real Estate Registration Trustee office to complete registration - steps a principal who is overseas, unwell, or otherwise unavailable cannot perform in person.

The underlying legal concept is agency, known in Arabic as wakala. Until recently this rested on the 1985 Civil Transactions Law (Federal Law No. 5 of 1985), whose Articles 924 to 961 defined agency contracts and an agent's authority. That law has now been repealed and replaced by a new Civil Transactions Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025, in force since 1 June 2026 - meaning it is the current operative law as this guide is published, not a future change. Commentary on the new law also notes a change to the general age of legal majority, from 21 to 18, which can affect who may grant or receive a POA in their own capacity.

A general power of attorney grants broad, ongoing authority across a range of the principal's affairs - property, banking, business matters - without being tied to one specific deal. A special, or specific, power of attorney is narrower by design: it authorises one defined transaction, such as the purchase of a named unit at a named development, and nothing beyond it.

For Dubai real estate, the practical answer is increasingly the special POA. Circular No. 29/R/2025 requires a property power of attorney to state the specific transaction it authorises - sale, purchase, gift, mortgage, usufruct or musataha - rather than relying on generic language authorising an agent to "manage and dispose of" a principal's property in general. The description here reflects secondary legal commentary rather than the circular's exact prescribed wording for each transaction type, and the precise phrasing should be confirmed with Dubai Land Department or a registration trustee before a specific POA is drafted. A generic, broadly worded POA risks rejection at the trustee office even if it was validly notarised, since the reviewing officer cannot confirm from its wording alone that the specific transaction was intended.

A UAE-resident principal can execute a POA before a public notary at Dubai Courts, another emirate's judicial department, or a licensed private notary. Since June 2023, the Ministry of Justice's Digital Power of Attorney Issuance Service (Phase 2) has allowed several standard POA types, including certain real estate powers of attorney, to be issued electronically in minutes rather than through an in-person notary appointment, secured on a blockchain-based platform. The current scope of which specific real estate transactions this digital service can issue directly should be checked directly on the Ministry of Justice's own platform. A separate e-Notary service allows a principal who cannot attend a notary office in person to complete the process remotely by video call, subject to identity verification.

A principal outside the UAE typically follows a longer chain: notarisation before a notary in the country where they are located; authentication by that country's competent national authority; legalisation by the nearest UAE embassy or consulate; and, once the document reaches the UAE, a final attestation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MOFAIC). An apostille - the simplified single-stamp certification used between Hague Apostille Convention member states - is not sufficient on its own, since the UAE is not a member of that convention; documents still need the full legalisation chain regardless of whether the origin country is a member. Our guide to buying Dubai property from overseas sets out country-specific examples of this chain in more detail.

Two further practical points matter for a POA specifically. First, Circular No. 29/R/2025 caps validity at two years from execution, so a POA notarised too far in advance of an expected transaction can expire before it is used. Second, submission generally requires the original physical document; a scanned copy is not accepted as a substitute, so time should be built in for couriering the original internationally. If the POA is not in Arabic, it typically needs an accompanying translation from a UAE-licensed legal translator.

Beyond the transaction-specific wording requirement described above, Circular No. 29/R/2025 is generally described in legal commentary as tightening verification standards following a period of increased scrutiny of POA-based transactions. That commentary describes QR-code-only verification as no longer sufficient by itself, with verification instead expected to run through specified official channels such as relevant judicial or notarial portals, alongside the original physical document. Where a POA authorises an agent to receive sale proceeds on the principal's behalf, the circular is described as requiring payment by manager's cheque made out in the principal's own name, not the agent's, unless a documented pass-through arrangement is in place - a safeguard aimed squarely at preventing proceeds from being diverted to an agent rather than reaching the actual seller.

In practice, a remote purchase using a POA generally follows a consistent sequence. The principal, working with a lawyer, drafts a special POA naming the specific property and transaction and appointing a trusted attorney-in-fact - commonly a UAE-qualified lawyer or a licensed real estate agent. The document is notarised and, if executed abroad, taken through the attestation chain described above. The appointed agent then uses the POA to sign the sale and purchase agreement (commonly Form F, where a broker is involved) and, on the agreed completion date, attends a Real Estate Registration Trustee office in person to complete the registration formalities and obtain the digital title deed on the buyer's behalf. Throughout this process, the trustee office reviews the POA's wording and validity before allowing the agent to sign, which is precisely why transaction-specific wording and an unexpired validity window matter in practice, not just on paper.

Circular No. 29/R/2025 sets a maximum validity of two years from a POA's execution date for use in a Dubai property transaction. Whether a shorter validity period stated inside a specific POA document controls over this regulatory cap, or the reverse, should be checked for the specific document in question. A POA can also be revoked earlier than either date, at the principal's initiative, through Dubai Land Department's own revocation service, or, where the POA was issued through the Ministry of Justice's digital platform, cancelled through that same e-Notary system. Separately from any active revocation, a POA terminates automatically on the principal's death or loss of legal capacity, regardless of the validity date stated on its face - a point worth flagging to an attorney-in-fact managing a transaction over a longer timeline, since a POA that looked valid on paper can already be legally void.

The central risk is an agent acting beyond the scope the principal actually intended - whether through a deliberately broad, generic POA, an agent overstepping a narrower one, or a forged or expired document being presented at a trustee office. A second, related risk is sale proceeds being directed to the agent rather than reaching the principal, which is the specific harm Circular No. 29/R/2025's payment-of-proceeds rule is designed to prevent. Misuse of a POA can expose the agent to civil liability for any loss caused and, depending on the facts, to criminal liability for fraud or forgery under UAE law.

The practical safeguards mirror the risks. A special POA scoped to one named transaction leaves far less room for misreading or misuse than a broad general POA. Keeping validity matched to the expected transaction timeline, rather than granting the full two years available by default, limits the window in which an unused or forgotten POA could be misapplied. Verifying a POA only through official channels rather than a QR code or scanned copy, appointing a licensed lawyer or regulated agent rather than an unlicensed intermediary, and revoking the POA promptly once the transaction completes - rather than leaving it outstanding - together account for most of the practical risk in this kind of arrangement.