Strata Law and Owners' Associations in Dubai: A Jointly Owned Property Guide

Any building where multiple owners hold title to individual units while sharing common parts - lobbies, lifts, car parks, pools, facades - needs a legal framework for who manages those shared parts and who pays for them. Dubai's version is Law No. (6) of 2019 Concerning Ownership of Jointly Owned Real Property in the Emirate of Dubai, which came into force 60 days after publication (Article 52) and repealed the earlier Law No. (27) of 2007 (Article 51), giving Dubai its first substantial overhaul of strata-style regulation in more than a decade.

The law applies to Master Projects and jointly owned real property across the emirate, including Special Development Zones and free zones - so an apartment in a DIFC tower and a unit in a mainland freehold community sit under broadly the same framework. Villa and townhouse communities built around shared amenities - a pool, a clubhouse, private roads - are generally brought into the same structure through a Master Community Declaration issued by the master developer, though no specific primary-text clause naming villa communities is confirmed here; confirm a specific project's classification directly on Mollak. In practice, almost every multi-unit freehold development an investor considers - apartment or villa - sits inside this system in some form, which is why understanding it matters before, not after, you buy.

The law splits management into three categories (Article 18). In a Major Project, the developer manages the common parts itself, or appoints a management company to do so, with an Owners' Committee providing oversight. In a Hotel Project, a RERA-approved hotel management company runs the common parts, again alongside a committee. In every other jointly owned project, RERA itself selects and appoints a specialist management company - the category most owner-investors in a standard apartment building will encounter.

Whichever category applies, the management entity's duties are the same in substance (Article 34): arranging maintenance, security, cleaning and insurance contracts for the building, submitting six-monthly reports to RERA, and depositing collected service charges into the designated account within seven working days of collection. RERA can replace a management entity it considers incompetent, following a defined process for the RERA-appointed category.

The Owners' Committee itself is constituted once 10% of a project's units are registered to owners, capped at nine members appointed by RERA, each required to be an owner in good standing on service charges (Article 22). It meets at least quarterly (Article 23), and its powers (Article 24) include reviewing the annual budget, verifying that the management entity is complying with the law, escalating an unresolved complaint to RERA within 14 days, and - for RERA-appointed management companies specifically - requesting that RERA replace one it judges is underperforming. A dormant or never-constituted committee on an older building is worth asking about directly; it signals weaker day-to-day oversight of the management company, not just a missing formality.

An owner's service charge is calculated as their unit's share of the total project area, applied to the approved annual budget (Article 25); the developer covers the equivalent share for any units it still owns. A separate usage charge can apply where a master developer runs shared facilities across a wider community beyond a single building (Article 26). Critically, no management entity may invoice owners until RERA has approved the budget (Article 27) - and that budget must itself be signed off by a certified audit firm before RERA will approve it, with temporary budgets permitted only where genuinely necessary.

Mollak is the system that makes this enforceable in practice. Built by RERA under the Dubai Land Department, it is the platform every management entity must use to submit budgets for approval, register as an approved manager or auditor, and issue quarterly invoices to owners. For an investor, Mollak's public-facing value is the Service Charge Index: search a project by name, usage type and year, and it returns the RERA-approved rate per square foot for that specific building - accessible through Mollak itself, the DLD website, or the Dubai REST app. Market commentary commonly cites approved rates spanning roughly AED 3 to AED 30 per square foot per year across Dubai's stock, though this is a reported range rather than a fixed ceiling - the only reliable figure for a specific unit is the one the Index actually returns for that project and year.

Article 30(e)(8) of the law requires every jointly owned property to maintain a cash reserve - in effect a sinking fund - to cover emergency expenses and the eventual replacement of equipment and devices in the common parts: lifts, fire systems, pumps, and similar major items. The reserve must sit in a bank account separate from the operating service charge account, and cannot be drawn on without RERA's prior approval except for a genuine emergency that cannot wait. If the reserve is not enough to cover an emergency, the Dubai Land Department can, with RERA's approval, call on owners directly for a top-up contribution.

The law itself does not state a single fixed minimum percentage the reserve must reach; RERA's implementing guidance for Owners' Associations points toward multi-year capital planning - one secondary legal source describes a ten-year forward-looking study underpinning the reserve budget - rather than one universal number, and no specific statutory percentage is confirmed here. For a buyer, the practical test is simpler than the legal one: ask for the current reserve fund balance and weigh it against the building's age. A tower approaching its second decade with a thin reserve and an ageing facade or lift bank is a plausible candidate for a special assessment shortly after you buy, whatever the headline service charge rate looks like today.

Ownership of a unit carries an undivided, proportional interest in the building's common parts (Article 11), and the right to sell or mortgage the unit freely to a licensed lender (Article 12). Co-owners hold pre-emption rights over a unit being sold to an outside buyer - a right they can exercise within 30 days of notarised notice, though it does not apply to a sale to a close relative (Articles 14-15) - and a unit's designated parking bay is legally tied to it and cannot be sold separately (Article 10).

The corresponding obligation is service charges, and the law is explicit that leasing out a unit does not change who is liable for them: an owner is not discharged from paying service charges and usage charges if their tenant fails to pay (Article 16). That risk sits with the investor, not the tenant, whatever a tenancy agreement's own recharge clause might say between landlord and tenant privately. An owner cannot refuse to pay, or claim a right of set-off, to avoid this liability (Article 28) - though the law also protects owners from a management entity retaliating by blocking access to their own unit to force payment (Article 29). Instead, unpaid charges give the management entity a lien over the unit and a formal collection route (Article 32), with disputes running through the Rental Disputes Center, which Article 42 of the law gives exclusive jurisdiction over matters connected to jointly owned property. In practice, unresolved arrears are commonly reported to block the No Objection Certificate a sale requires, and in the most severe unresolved cases to lead toward a forced sale by an execution judge; the lien mechanism itself is confirmed in the law but no specific article describing forced auction is confirmed here, so confirm the full enforcement pathway with a UAE-qualified lawyer if arrears are a live issue on a unit you are considering. The law also provides for substantial fines for breaches of its provisions - reported in secondary commentary as AED 1,000,000 to AED 2,000,000, doubling on repetition within a year (Article 44) - though whether that range applies to individual owners, management entities, or both is not confirmed here.

The legal framework above translates into a short, practical checklist before committing capital to a jointly owned unit:

• Check the Service Charge Index on Mollak or the DLD website for the project's current RERA-approved rate per square foot, and how it has moved over the last few years.
• Ask the seller or agent to confirm, in writing, that service charges are fully paid to date - arrears will stall the No Objection Certificate regardless of who caused them or when you complete.
• Request the last one to two years of Owners' Association budgets and financial statements, including the current reserve fund balance, rather than relying on the headline rate alone.
• Identify which management category applies and whether RERA has ever replaced the management company - a documented replacement is worth understanding, not automatically a red flag.
• Confirm the Owners' Committee actually exists and meets - a dormant committee on an older building points to weaker oversight, not just a missing formality.
• Weigh the reserve fund against the building's age - ageing lifts, facades and waterproofing are exactly what the reserve exists to fund, and a thin balance on an older tower is a leading indicator of a near-term special assessment.