How off-plan payment plans work in Dubai

The short version

• A payment plan splits the price into a booking payment, instalments while the building goes up, a payment on completion and, in some plans, instalments after you get the keys. The labels are not standard: “60/40” can mean 60% before completion and 40% on it, or 60% until handover and 40% over the years after. Ask which yours is.
• The Land Department’s registration fee, 4% of the price, comes on top of the plan. It is due when the developer registers your purchase, which must happen within 90 days of signing. Your contract says who pays it.
• An instalment tied to a construction stage falls due when the stage is reached, and you may ask for the project consultant’s letter first. An instalment on a fixed date falls due on the date, however far the building has got.
• A plan set in calendar dates or construction stages does not restart when you sign. If you sign a year after the launch, the instalments already past can fall due on the day you sign: in our example, 34% of the price instead of 24%.
• Every instalment goes into the project’s escrow account, never to the developer’s own account or to a broker.
• If part of the price is due after handover, you normally get the keys before the title deed: the law ties registration in your name to your having “fulfilled all [your] contractual obligations”. The rules for a missed payment do not stop at handover. After a 30-day notice from the Land Department, the developer of a finished building may claim the rest of the price, or end the contract, keep up to 40% of the price and refund the rest.
• “Interest-free” means no interest is added to the price. Ask what the developer would take off for paying earlier. In our example, where 40% of the price is paid over two years after handover, 3% off for paying it at handover means the credit costs you about 7% a year.

How to read a payment plan

A plan has up to four parts, in this order:

1. The booking payment, at signing.
2. Instalments during construction, on fixed dates or when the building reaches stages.
3. The payment on completion, due when the building is finished.
4. In some plans, instalments after handover, monthly or quarterly, for one or more years.

Completion is when the building is finished; handover is when you get the keys. Your contract says what you must have paid before you get them.

The labels are not standard, so read the plan, not its name. One developer’s “60/40” means 60% of the price paid during construction and 40% on completion. In a plan with payments after handover, the same “60/40” can mean 60% until handover and 40% over the years after it, and a plan with 60% after handover is sold as “40/60”. One is a large sum due on one day; the other is spread over years. Ask what each number means, in writing.

What the percentages leave out: the Land Department’s 4% registration fee, the developer’s administration fees, the title deed fees and the service charge. They are below.

Every amount is fixed in dirhams. The percentages apply to the price in your contract. If you earn in another currency, see “Where the money goes”.

Your plan, in dirhams

Pick an example plan, enter a price and say when the plan was launched. The launch matters because instalments whose dates have passed may fall due when you sign. The calculator shows what falls due when, in dirhams, if you sign this month. The three plans are examples we made up to show the shapes you will meet; they are not any developer’s plan.

• 60/40, tied to construction: 10% at booking; five instalments of 10%, when the building reaches 20%, 35%, 50%, 65% and 80% completion; 40% on completion.
• 50/50, on fixed dates: 20% at booking; six instalments of 5%, one every five months; 50% on completion.
• 40/20/40, two years after handover: 10% at booking; three instalments of 10%, nine months apart; 20% on completion; eight quarterly instalments of 5% in the two years after handover. Some would sell this plan as 40/60 (40% before completion), others as 60/40 (60% by handover).

Dates or construction stages

An instalment tied to a construction stage falls due when the stage is reached, and you may ask for proof first. When the developer asks for a payment tied to a stage, you may ask for a letter from the project consultant the Land Department has approved, stating how far the building is. Until the stage is confirmed, the investor “will not be obligated to pay”, in the Land Department’s words.

An instalment on a fixed date falls due on its date, however far the building has got. In the 50/50 example, half the price is paid by month 30 whether the building is on time or a year late.

What the law says about the link. The regulation that implements the off-plan law lets a purchaser ask a court to end the contract if the developer “declines to link payments to the construction milestones proposed by RERA”, the regulator. That is a remedy for a court, not a reason to stop paying. We found no rule that forbids fixed dates or caps what a developer may ask for before completion; the shape of the plan is in your contract.

Check the building before each payment. The Land Department’s Project Status Enquiry shows a project’s completion percentage on its website, in the Dubai REST app and on WhatsApp. Compare the stage named in a payment request with the percentage there.

A plan that started before you

A plan set in calendar dates or construction stages does not restart when you sign. If you sign months after the launch, some of its instalments may already be past. A plan counted in months from your own booking starts when you sign. Ask which kind yours is.

Take the 50/50 example, launched 12 months before you sign, at AED 1,500,000. Two of its instalments are past. If they fall due at signing, you pay the 20% booking payment, the two instalments of 5% and the 4% fee on the day you sign: 34% of the price, AED 510,000. A buyer who signed at the launch paid AED 360,000 that day. The total is the same; only the timing moves. In the calculator, set “The plan was launched” to 12 months ago; the switch below it shows the case where the passed instalments are not yet settled.

Ask in writing how instalments whose dates have passed are handled, before you reserve.

Buying from an earlier buyer is a resale, with its own rules: the developer’s consent, a new registration and the Land Department’s fee. See What can go wrong when you buy off-plan in Dubai.

What comes on top of the plan

On top of the plan come four costs: the Land Department’s 4% fee, the developer’s administration fees, the title deed fees and the service charge.

The Land Department’s registration fee: 4% of the price, plus AED 20. The developer registers your purchase through the Land Department’s Oqood portal in the interim register, the register of units sold off-plan, “within 90 days from the date of signing the contract”, and the Land Department emails you an electronic registration certificate. Its fee list charges 2% to the seller and 2% to the purchaser; your contract decides who actually pays them. Ask for the certificate if it has not come within 90 days.

Administration fees, only those the Land Department approves. The Land Department charges the developer AED 1,000 to register your sale. Beyond that, the law lets a developer charge on a sale, a resale or any other disposition only “those administrative costs which are approved by the Department”. Ask for every fee in writing before you sign.

When the title deed is issued, at handover or after your last instalment: AED 520 in title deed and related fees. Before you move in or let the unit: a deposit and connection fee for electricity and water. And the service charge, from completion or handover as your contract says. The amounts, and a 2025 ruling on when the service charge starts, are in What can go wrong when you buy off-plan in Dubai.

Where the money goes

Every instalment goes into the project’s escrow account. The escrow law: “the payments made by off-plan purchasers, or by the financers of the project are deposited in an account opened with the Escrow Agent in the name of the Real Estate Development project.” A broker “may not deposit the price into his own account”. Before every transfer, compare the account in your contract with the escrow account number the Dubai REST app shows for the project. If the developer gives you a different account for the instalments after handover, ask why, and get it in writing.

Before a project is approved, there is no escrow account. A contract to sell an off-plan unit in a project the authorities have not approved is void; the escrow account is opened only once the regulator approves the project; and the Land Department says a new project may be launched or announced only “after completing all registration procedures”. Money you pay to reserve a unit before that, which sales agents may call an “expression of interest”, is not in an escrow account. Check that the project appears in Project Status Enquiry before you pay anything, and get the refund terms in writing.

Sending the money from abroad. Start each transfer well ahead of its date: the banks’ checks, more than the transfer itself, take the time; see Proving where your money came from. If the developer asks for post-dated cheques, ask whether transfers from abroad are accepted instead.

Your plan is fixed in dirhams, not in your currency. If you earn in euros or pounds, each instalment is bought at the exchange rate of its day, and over a three-year plan that rate moves. The guides for buyers from Germany, from the UK and from the Netherlands show how far. If you earn in dollars, the rate does not move while the dirham’s peg to the dollar holds; your bank’s margin still applies. See Buying property in Dubai as a US citizen.

How money leaves the escrow account, and what happens if a project stops, is in What can go wrong when you buy off-plan in Dubai.

The completion payment

Know where the completion payment will come from before you sign. In our examples it is 20% to 50% of the price, due on one day. It falls due when the building is finished, so its date moves if the building is late.

From your own money: plan the transfer early, as above.

From a bank loan at handover: the Central Bank caps loans on “property being purchased off plans” at 50% of its value, “regardless of purpose, value, or category of purchaser”. For other homes bought by expatriates, its caps are 80% for a first home under AED 5 million, 70% above it, and 60% for a second home or an investment. The rules do not say when a unit bought off-plan stops counting as off-plan, so ask the bank which cap it applies at handover. These are ceilings, and they say nothing about where you live. Banks may lend less: to buyers who do not live in the UAE, Mashreq “finances up to 50%” of the property’s fair market value, and HSBC lends “up to 60%” of its value. A bank lends on its own valuation, not on your price.

If you want to borrow before completion, banks may lend at most 50% of the value, and your own money goes in first; see What can go wrong when you buy off-plan in Dubai.

Ask a bank for an approval in principle, for this unit, before you sign, and again as completion nears.

After handover: the keys before the title deed

If part of the price is due after handover, you normally get the keys before the title deed. The law: once a project is complete, developers must enter it in the property register, which includes “entering sold Units in the name of purchasers who fulfilled their contractual obligations”. The developer may not refuse to register a unit in its purchaser’s name “provided that the purchaser fulfils all his contractual obligations”. It does not have to before then, so until your last instalment your purchase normally stays in the interim register.

The developer cannot hold a mortgage over the unit. Dubai’s mortgage law accepts as mortgagee only “a bank, or a financing company or institution, that is duly licensed and registered with the UAE Central Bank to provide Real Property financing in the UAE”. What protects the developer is that it need not register the unit in your name until you have paid, and the rules for a missed payment.

The rules for a missed payment do not end at handover. They apply to any off-plan sale agreement with a developer, and their top band covers projects more than 80% complete, which a finished building is. The developer notifies the Land Department, which gives you 30 days to pay and tries to mediate. After that, the developer may, without going to court:

• keep the contract, keep what you have paid and claim “the balance of the value of the agreement”: the rest of the price, not only the missed instalment;
• have the Land Department sell the unit at public auction to collect what it is owed, and charge you the costs of the sale; or
• end the contract, “retain up to forty percent (40%) of the value of the Real Property Unit” and refund the rest, within a year of ending it, or within 60 days of reselling the unit if that comes first.

You can still go to court or arbitration. If an instalment is at risk, talk to the developer before its date. The full procedure is in What can go wrong when you buy off-plan in Dubai.

Ask before you sign:

• When is the title deed issued, and who pays its fees?
• May I let the unit before the last instalment? If you plan to pay the instalments from the rent, this decides it, and count the service charge too.
• May I sell it before the last instalment, and how is the balance settled at the sale?
• What does the contract charge for a late instalment, and can you claim the whole balance at once?

The law would let a bank pay off the balance, but we found no bank that offers it. A purchaser of a unit sold off-plan may mortgage it while it is in the interim register. Some banks advertise loans for the payment due at handover; ADIB, for example, offers “financing developer purchase or handover payments”. None we checked offers to pay off the instalments after it. If you may need this, ask the bank before you sign.

What “interest-free” costs

“Interest-free” means no interest is added to the price, not that the credit costs nothing. A developer that waits two years after handover for 40% of the price is lending you that money. If the credit has a cost, it is in the price. To see it, ask what the developer would take off for paying earlier.

Take the 40/20/40 example at AED 1,500,000. Its last 40%, AED 600,000, is paid in eight quarterly instalments in the two years after handover. If the developer would take something off for that 40% paid at handover, here is what the credit costs you:

Compare the rate with what a loan would cost you, or with what your money earns elsewhere. If the developer takes nothing off for paying earlier, the credit is free, at that price. The cost can also sit in the price itself: ask the price of the same unit on a plan with nothing after handover, and compare the price per square foot with similar buildings whose plans ask for more before handover.

Paying more earlier has a cost of its own: during construction, more of your money is in a building that is not finished.

Before you sign: questions about the plan

• Which instalments are tied to construction stages, and which to dates? What will you send me as proof of a stage?
• Has the plan already started? If dates have passed, what falls due when I sign?
• What does each number in the plan’s name mean: is the last part due on completion, or after handover, and over how long?
• How much notice will I get before the completion payment, and what must I have paid to get the keys?
• Who pays the Land Department’s 4% fee, and which administration fees do I pay, in dirhams? Has the Land Department approved them?
• What would the price be if I paid more earlier: at signing, or at handover?
• Into which account does each payment go, including those after handover? Is it the escrow account Dubai REST shows?
• If I pay a booking amount before the sale and purchase agreement, when and how is it refunded if I do not sign?
• If part is due after handover: the four questions above.
• If I want to borrow the completion payment: will a bank lend on this unit, to someone in my situation, and how much?
• Can I pay each instalment by transfer from abroad?
• After how much paid may I resell before completion, and what does your consent cost?

Questions and answers

Related guides

• What can go wrong when you buy off-plan in Dubai
• Proving where your money came from
• What a guaranteed return is actually worth