How much do real estate agents make in Dubai?

There is no rule: the split is agreed between the agent and the brokerage, as a share of the fee the agency collects. Commission-only agencies commonly pay half of it or more; agencies that pay a basic salary pay a smaller share, so the agents who sell earn less overall. What moves the real figure is who finds the clients — a high split on deals you have to find yourself can pay less than a lower one on leads the agency hands you. At McCone Properties it is 50–70% of every fee, paid daily, with no salary, no draw and no cap.

The first month goes on training and the RERA licence. Months two and three are the hard ones: learning a patch, building a pipeline and closing the first deals. A lease can close in days and is paid when the tenancy is signed; a resale is paid when it transfers at the trustee’s office, often a month or more after the offer. That gap is why we tell every candidate to arrive with around six months of savings — most agents reach a stable income within their first few months.

The one that sets a new agent up to close, which you can check before you sign. It pays for the RERA course, the licence and the visa itself, not out of your first commissions. It hands you leads rather than asking you to buy them. It trains you before you meet a client. It says its split in writing, says when it pays — daily, monthly or at transfer — and charges no desk fee. And it is licensed: every brokerage and broker is on the Land Department’s public registers. An agency that asks you to fund your own licence before you are employed is the one to walk away from.

Not in the UAE, which has no personal income tax: an agent employed by a brokerage keeps the commission they are paid. VAT is charged on the agency’s fee to the client and corporate tax falls on the company, not on the agent. Whether your home country taxes you is a separate question — US citizens, for instance, are taxed by the US wherever they live.