For buyers and sellers · Dubai
Conveyancing in Dubai
40,458 completed homes changed hands in Dubai in the year to 31 Aug 2026, every one of them registered at a trustee office and dated by the Land Department. This page is what conveyancing means here — not the English procedure, the department’s — the steps from the Form F to the deed with who does each and what it costs, how a buyer in the United Kingdom completes without flying in, what stops a transfer, and, from the register, how many there are and on which days they are done.
Read this first
What conveyancing is in Dubai, and what a conveyancer does
The word came from England and the procedure did not. Here the Land Department registers the sale itself, on its own forms, through the offices it licenses; a conveyancer is the person who gets the file to that desk complete.
In England a solicitor searches the title, exchanges contracts and completes weeks later, and the buyer never meets the seller. In Dubai the department holds one register, the title deed is verified in an app in a minute, the contract is the department’s Form F, and there is no exchange: the two sides, or their attorneys, sit at a registration trustee office on one morning, the cheques pass across the desk, the department’s auditor approves the file and the deed arrives by email that afternoon. The registrar checks the file and enters the sale. The registrar does not advise either side, chase the developer, draw the cheques or sequence the banks.
That is the conveyancer’s work: reading the deed and the seller before the offer, seeing that the Form F says what happens if the loan is refused or the NOC is late, ordering the NOC and the bank’s letters against the completion date rather than after it, drawing the cheques to the right payees, holding a power of attorney for the party abroad, and arriving at the desk with nothing missing. Nothing in Dubai law requires one. What requires one is a party in another country, a mortgage on either side, or a developer who takes its time — which between them describe most of the transfers below.
- Who registers
- The Land Department, through the nineteen private registration trustee offices it licenses; the department’s auditors approve every file remotely and issue the deed.
- The contract
- The department’s Form F, signed on Dubai REST — still called the MOU by most of the market — with a 10% deposit cheque lodged and held.
- The searches
- One: the seller’s deed in the department’s register, verified in Dubai REST; and the developer’s NOC, which says the service charges are paid and the developer has no claim.
- Completion
- One morning at the trustee office, price and fees by manager’s cheque, the old deed cancelled and the new one issued in the same act. A mortgaged home is two mornings.
- The conveyancer
- Not a party, not the registrar, not required by law. The coordinator who holds the sequence, and the attorney for whoever cannot be in the room.
The steps
From the Form F to the deed, in the department’s order
Who does each step, the paper it runs on, what it costs and where it happens. Every fee is the Land Department’s own schedule, read from its service pages; what is a convention is named as one.
| Step | Who | Document | Fee | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Check the deed and the advert | The buyer, or the conveyancer | The seller’s title deed, verified in Dubai REST; the advert’s Trakheesi permit | None | The department’s app, before anything is offered |
| 2. Form F — the MOU | Both sides and their brokers | The department’s Form F, signed on Dubai REST; the buyer’s 10% deposit cheque, held and not cashed | No department fee; the deposit is convention | Dubai REST; the cheque with the broker or the trustee |
| 3. The bank, if borrowing | The buyer’s bank or broker | Pre-approval before the Form F; the valuation and the final offer letter after it | The bank’s valuation and arrangement fees, plus VAT | The lender — the mortgage brokers page has the sequence |
| 4. The NOC | The seller | The developer’s no-objection certificate: service charges settled, no claim on the unit | Set by the developer, commonly AED 500 to AED 5,000; conventionally the seller’s | Applied for through Dubai REST or at the developer’s office |
| 5. The seller’s mortgage | The seller’s bank | A liability letter with the payoff figure, then a release letter once the bank is paid | AED 1,290 to the department and AED 315 to the trustee to release the charge; conventionally the seller’s | The bank, then the trustee office — a second visit |
| 6. A power of attorney | Whoever will not be in the room | A power of attorney naming the transaction, notarised and attested for the UAE, in Arabic | The notary’s and the attesting offices’; none of it the department’s | A Dubai notary in an afternoon, or abroad through the chain below |
| 7. The cheques | The buyer, or the buyer’s bank | Manager’s cheques drawn on a UAE bank: the price or the balance above the loan, the 4%, the commission | The bank’s charge for each cheque | A UAE bank, or the trustee’s or brokerage’s client account for a buyer with none |
| 8. Transfer day | Both sides or their attorneys, the brokers, a bank’s representative, the registrar | Original passports or Emirates IDs, the NOC read from the system, the department’s sale contract signed | 4% of the price; AED 250 deed, AED 250 map, AED 10 and AED 10; the trustee’s AED 4,000 + VAT (AED 2,000 + VAT under AED 500,000); 0.25% of any loan to register it | A registration trustee office — nineteen on the department’s list, any of them for any home |
| 9. The deed | The department | The electronic title deed and map, emailed and shown in the buyer’s Dubai REST account; the seller’s deed cancelled in the same act | In the fees above | The department’s auditors, remotely, in its hours — the same afternoon on a clean morning file |
| 10. After the deed | The buyer | The DEWA account in the buyer’s name; service charges apportioned to the day; Ejari if the home is let | DEWA’s deposit and connection; the Ejari fee | DEWA and the department, in the first week |
Fees checked 15 Sept 2026 on the department’s service pages, through this site’s trustee office and cost of buying explainers, which carry each in full and work the whole morning on a two-million-dirham home. The department’s schedule is the department’s to change; the trustee’s receipt is the figure. An off-plan purchase takes none of these steps: it is registered by the developer on Oqood for the same 4%, and becomes a deed at handover without a trustee.
What it costs
What conveyancing costs in Dubai, and who pays it
Two different sums that the word covers: the department’s fees, which are fixed and published, and the conveyancer’s own, which is not. Everything on the day is cash or manager’s cheque; none of it can be borrowed.
- Transfer feeRegulation
- 4% of the price. The buyer — the schedule writes it as 2% from each side; every contract in the market puts it on the buyer.
- Title deed and mapRegulation
- AED 250 and AED 250, with AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation fees — AED 520; quoted across the market, and on this site’s cost-of-buying page, as AED 580. The buyer.
- Registration trusteeRegulation
- AED 4,000 + VAT on a price of AED 500,000 or more; AED 2,000 + VAT below it — fixed by the department and the same at every office. The buyer, by convention.
- Registering a mortgageRegulation
- 0.25% of the loan plus AED 290 in certificate fees. The buyer, if borrowing.
- Releasing the seller’s mortgageRegulation
- AED 1,290 to the department and AED 315 to the trustee. The seller, by convention.
- The developer’s NOCConvention
- Set by the developer, commonly AED 500 to AED 5,000. The seller, by convention.
- CommissionConvention
- 2% of the price plus 5% VAT on the commission — 2.1% all in. The buyer, to the agent who brought the home; a seller pays their own agent the same.
- The conveyancerQuoted
- Quoted per transaction, as a fixed sum. No firm on the first page of results publishes a figure; the portals’ fee guides put it at AED 5,000 to AED 15,000 for a home, most at the lower end. Whoever engaged the conveyancer — usually the buyer, sometimes each side their own.
The department’s items were read from its service pages on 15 Sept 2026; the conveyancer’s range is the portals’ fee guides on the same day, not any firm’s schedule and not ours — ask for a written quotation before the Form F. A cash buyer’s fees come to a little over 6% of the price and a borrower’s to more; the mortgage calculator turns a price into the cash needed on the day.
From the register
How many transfers there are, and when they are done
Every completed home that changes hands in Dubai is entered at a trustee office and dated by the department, so the register says how many there are, on which days, and under which of the department’s procedures.
40,458 completed apartments and villas were registered as sold in the twelve months to 31 Aug 2026 — 3,372 a month, 159 on a working day. The register dates not one of them to a Saturday or a Sunday: three trustee offices open at the weekend, but the department’s auditors issue in the department’s hours, and a file taken on a Saturday is a deed on the Monday — which is why Monday carries 26% of the year, 196 on an average one, against 115 on a Friday, the half day.
34,388 of the year’s transfers were the ordinary sale. 4,563 — one in 9 — were registered under the department’s Delayed Sell procedure, the instalment sale: the price paid over a schedule, the buyer’s right entered in the interim register meanwhile so the seller can neither sell nor mortgage the home again, and the title issued on the last payment. The register puts most of them in towers handed over in the last two years — which reads as a seller still on a developer’s post-handover plan, though the register does not say so. The remaining 1,507 carry the developer’s own procedures — a completed unit sold from its stock rather than by an owner. And the year’s 122,865 off-plan sales took none of these steps: registered on Oqood by the developer, three sales in four, without a trustee.
| Day | Transfers in the year | Share | On an average day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 10,401 | 26% | 196 |
| Tuesday | 7,864 | 19% | 157 |
| Wednesday | 8,011 | 20% | 157 |
| Thursday | 8,413 | 21% | 165 |
| Friday | 5,769 | 14% | 115 |
| Saturday and Sunday | 0 | 0% | 0 |
The bank is at most of these desks. The same register filed 27,191 residential mortgages in the same twelve months — about 67 for every hundred completed-home sales — and a registration is not tied to a sale, so the share of transfers with a bank at the table is somewhat lower than that and still most of them. The mortgage brokers page has that side of the year district by district.
Completed apartments and villas only (the register’s Existing Properties), with the implausible rows every report on this site excludes, in the twelve months to 31 Aug 2026; the date is the department’s registration date, which is the day the deed issued, not the day the Form F was signed — the register keeps no record of the latter, so this page prints no measured time from MOU to deed. The procedure names are the department’s own. The Delayed Sell’s meaning is a registration trustee’s description of the service, read 15 Sept 2026; where in the city it falls is the register’s.
Where the transfers are
The communities where the most completed homes changed hands
The ten busiest communities for completed-home sales in the twelve months to 11 Sept 2026, from the register this site reads nightly — the districts where a conveyancer is at the trustee office most weeks.
| Community | Completed-home sales | Median AED / sqft | Buildings with a sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jumeirah Village Circle | 4,278 | 1,312 | 415 |
| Business Bay | 2,397 | 1,886 | 159 |
| Dubai Marina | 1,832 | 1,892 | 154 |
| Mohammed Bin Rashid City | 1,595 | 2,038 | 140 |
| Downtown Dubai | 1,408 | 2,538 | 156 |
| International City | 1,371 | 661 | 302 |
| Arjan | 1,337 | 1,354 | 107 |
| Dubai Creek Harbour (The Lagoons) | 1,234 | 2,330 | 114 |
| Dubai Sports City | 1,219 | 937 | 84 |
| Dubai Hills Estate | 1,185 | 2,305 | 108 |
Resales of completed homes, the register’s last twelve months to 11 Sept 2026, communities clearing the city league’s twenty-sale floor. A later window than the year above, because this table refreshes itself nightly and the day-of-week reading is a dated snapshot. Every community links its area guide, and the full league — every community and every tower by what buyers paid — is the Dubai property prices report.
From the United Kingdom
Conveyancing in Dubai for UK buyers
A buyer in Britain can complete a Dubai purchase without flying in. What has to travel is a power of attorney and the money; each has one route, and both are ordered first.
The power of attorney is the slow document. The UAE is not in the Hague apostille convention, so a document signed in Britain runs a chain of four offices before a Dubai registrar will read it: signed before a UK notary public, legalised by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, attested by the UAE Embassy in London — which now does it digitally, and will not attest a document the FCDO has not legalised first — and then attested by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs here, and translated into Arabic by a legal translator. It is drafted to name the transaction: this home, this price, bought by this person from that one, and the attendance at the trustee office to do it. A buyer who will be in Dubai for a week signs one at a Dubai notary in an afternoon instead.
The money moves by manager’s cheque on the day, drawn on a UAE bank. A buyer with no UAE account either opens a non-resident one, which several banks offer against a passport and proof of address, or wires the funds to the registration trustee’s or the brokerage’s client account, which draws the cheques. The bank, the trustee and the broker will each ask where the money came from, and a wire from a named account in the buyer’s own name, with the paperwork behind it, is the purchase that completes on the date. The dirham has been pegged to the dollar at 3.6725 since 1997, so the risk between offer and completion is sterling against the dollar, not against anything Dubai does.
- Who can buy
- Anyone, of any nationality, outright and in their own name, in the freehold areas — most of the city built this century. No visa, no residency, no local partner. A tourist on a thirty-day stamp can complete.
- The attorney
- A lawyer, a relative here, or the brokerage’s conveyancer, named in the document. The registrar checks the power against the notary’s record on the morning, and against the sale.
- Borrowing
- A shorter list of UAE banks lends to a buyer with no UAE visa, commonly on about half the price, on a completed freehold home, against the same kind of file a resident supplies with UK papers in place of the Emirates ID. The purchase then has a bank at the desk like any other.
- Tax
- Dubai levies no tax on the purchase beyond the fees on this page, none on the rent for an individual and none on a gain. The UK taxes its residents on worldwide income and gains, with nothing here to set against it — a question for an adviser at home before the deposit, not after the deed.
- The visa it can earn
- A two-year investor visa on any property a sole owner holds, and the ten-year Golden Visa at AED 2,000,000 — each applied for on the deed, after the purchase, and each optional.
The attestation chain is the UAE Embassy in London’s own instruction, read 15 Sept 2026; the notary’s, the FCDO’s and the embassy’s fees are theirs and move. Non-resident lending terms are each bank’s own; the mortgage brokers page carries them beside what buyers in each district actually borrowed. The whole purchase from abroad — who can buy where, the steps, what a home sells for — is buying property in Dubai as a foreigner; the move itself, from the tenancy to the school run, is moving to Dubai from the UK; the freehold areas page lists every district a foreigner can own in, and the Golden Visa and investor visa explainers what the deed can earn.
What goes wrong
What stops a transfer, and when it is found
Six things account for most of the completion dates that move. None of them is exotic; each is a document ordered late or drawn wrong, found at the desk instead of the week before.
- The NOC
- The developer will not issue it while service charges are owed, and it takes the developer’s time, not the seller’s — a few days at some, a couple of weeks at others. It is the step that most often sets the date, and a completion date written into the Form F before the NOC has been applied for is a guess. Order it the week the form is signed.
- The mortgage release
- A home with a mortgage on it is two visits to the trustee office: the seller’s bank is paid on the first and issues its release letter afterwards, days rather than hours and sometimes a fortnight, and the parties come back for the deed. Where the buyer also borrows, two banks, the trustee and the NOC have to agree one morning. A conveyancer’s calendar is most of the job here.
- The cheque
- A manager’s cheque is drawn to a named payee for a fixed sum, and a payee spelt wrongly, a sum a dirham short, or a wire that has not cleared into the account it is drawn on stops the desk. The 4% is a separate cheque to the department unless the office takes it electronically. A buyer with no UAE account agrees the route — a non-resident account, or the trustee’s or brokerage’s client account — at the Form F, not the week of the transfer.
- The power of attorney
- The registrar reads it against the notary’s record and against the transaction. One drafted for a different property, one that names a sale but not a purchase, one attested abroad but not translated, or one whose attestation chain stopped at the embassy, is not accepted on the day. It is drafted to say exactly what is being bought or sold, by whom, from whom.
- The deposit
- The 10% cheque is held, not cashed, and the Form F says what happens to it. A buyer who walks for a reason the form does not allow forfeits it; a seller who walks conventionally pays the same sum. A financed buyer whose loan is refused keeps it only if the form made the sale depend on the loan — the clause a conveyancer checks before anyone signs.
- The valuation
- The bank lends on the lower of the price and its own valuation, and where an asking price has run ahead of what the building’s register records the gap is cash on the day. What a home in the building actually sold for is on its own page, through the Dubai property prices report, before the offer rather than after the valuation.
Questions people ask
Conveyancing in Dubai, answered
Do I need a conveyancer in Dubai?
No. Nothing in Dubai law requires one; the Land Department’s forms are standard, its registration is done at a trustee office by the department’s own registrars, and a buyer and seller with both sides in the room, no mortgage on either side and a developer who issues the NOC on time can complete without one. A conveyancer is worth having when any of those is not true — a party abroad, a seller’s mortgage to release, a buyer’s to register, a developer slow with the NOC — because the transfer is a sequence, and the person who has done it many times is the one who keeps the date.
How much does conveyancing cost in Dubai?
Two different sums. The department’s fees are fixed and the same at every office: 4% of the price, about AED 520 to AED 580 for the deed and map, and the trustee’s AED 4,000 plus VAT (AED 2,000 under AED 500,000), plus 0.25% of any loan to register it — checked 15 Sept 2026. The conveyancer’s own fee is quoted per transaction, as a fixed sum; no firm on the first page of results publishes a figure, and the portals’ fee guides put it between AED 5,000 and AED 15,000 for a home, most at the lower end. Ask for it in writing before the Form F.
Can I buy property in Dubai from the UK?
Yes, without flying in. A power of attorney signed before a UK notary, legalised by the FCDO, attested by the UAE Embassy in London and then by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here, and translated into Arabic, lets someone in Dubai sign the Form F and attend the trustee office for you. The money comes by wire into a UAE account — your own non-resident one, or the trustee’s or brokerage’s client account — which draws the manager’s cheques. A shorter list of UAE banks lends to a buyer with no UAE visa, commonly on about half the price. The dirham is pegged to the dollar, so the exchange risk between offer and completion is the dollar’s.
How long does conveyancing take in Dubai?
The desk itself is about twenty-five minutes on a clean file, and the department issues the deed the same afternoon. The weeks before it are the NOC and, where there is one, the bank: by convention two to four weeks from the Form F for a cash buyer and six to eight with a mortgage, and a seller’s mortgage adds a second visit to the trustee office once the bank’s release has come. The register records the transfer, not the day the Form F was signed, so nobody has a measured median; the conventions are what the market has settled on.
What does a conveyancer do at the trustee office?
Arrives with the file the registrar will ask for and nothing missing from it: the originals, the cheques drawn to the right payees for the right sums, the power of attorney if there is one, the bank’s representative if there is a loan. Then attends for the party who cannot, signs under the power of attorney, pays the fees, takes the receipts, and sees the deed issue. The registrar checks the file and enters the transaction; the conveyancer is the one who made sure there was nothing to find.
Who pays the conveyancing fee in Dubai?
Whoever engaged the conveyancer — usually the buyer, since most of the sequence is the buyer’s to get right, and sometimes each side their own. It is not in the department’s schedule and not in the price. The department’s own fees are the buyer’s by contract, the NOC and a mortgage release the seller’s by convention.
Where this leads
The rest of the reading
The morning itself, office by office, is the trustee office explainer; every fee on the day, worked on a price, is the cost of buying; the deed that issues is the title deed one. The same sequence from the other chair — the NOC, the mortgage released, what the home is worth — is sell property in Dubai, and the weeks a borrower spends before the desk are on mortgage brokers in Dubai. What a home in your building actually sold for is on the Dubai property prices page and in each community’s area guide; what is for sale with us today is on Buy.
Our conveyancing desk
Buying or selling, and want the file at the desk complete?
McCone has been in Dubai since 2013 and runs a conveyancing desk that holds the sequence from the Form F to the deed — the NOC, the banks, the cheques, a power of attorney for a party abroad, and the morning at the trustee office. Tell us which side you are on, whether there is a mortgage on either, and where you will be on the day, and we will come back with the steps, the department’s fees and our own, in writing.