The Dubai Land Department

The Dubai Land Department is the government department that keeps the register of every property in the emirate of Dubai and regulates the market that trades in it. Every title deed is its certificate, every sale, mortgage and gift is an entry in its register, every tenancy is registered with it, and the fee a buyer pays on the day is its fee. It was inaugurated in January 1960 by Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, which makes it older than the UAE, and it runs today under Law No. 7 of 2013, reporting to the Executive Council. In Arabic it is the Department of Lands and Properties; in every conversation it is the DLD.

Most of what a resident meets in Dubai property is the department wearing another name. RERA, the regulator, is its agency. The Rental Dispute Centre is its tribunal. Ejari, the tenancy registry, the rental index and the calculator that caps a rent increase, Oqood, the off-plan register, Mollak, the service-charge system, Dubai REST, the app, and the trustee offices where a sale is completed are all its services. This page is the map: what the department is, how it is divided, which of its services a tenant, a buyer or an owner actually uses and what each costs, where to find it, and what it publishes about the market that this site reads every night. Every figure was checked on 15 September 2026; a fee is the department's to change, and its own page on the day is the one that binds.

What the Dubai Land Department does

Four jobs, under one roof on Baniyas Road.

• It registers. The real property register, under Law No. 7 of 2006, is the record of who owns what in Dubai, and the department is its keeper: it issues the title deed, records every transfer, mortgage and gift against it, keeps the interim register for homes that are not built yet, and registers every lease through Ejari. Nothing in Dubai property is real until it is in the register; a sale that is not registered is, in the words of the off-plan law, void.
• It regulates, through RERA. The Real Estate Regulatory Agency, set up inside the department by Law No. 16 of 2007 and run under Law No. 4 of 2019, licenses the brokers and the developers, issues the permit every advertisement carries, audits the escrow accounts an off-plan buyer's instalments sit in, and approves each building's service-charge budget. The RERA explainer has what it does and does not do.
• It judges, through the Rental Dispute Centre. Decree No. 26 of 2013 gave the department its own tribunal for landlords and tenants, with judges, an appeals bench and an enforcement arm. A deposit withheld, a rent raised above the index, a notice served late or an eviction all end there.
• It promotes and it teaches. An investment-promotion arm markets the emirate's property abroad and runs the desk that turns a title deed into a residence visa, and the Dubai Real Estate Institute trains the brokers RERA licenses. The department's own description of its structure names three sectors: real estate registration, RERA, and corporate support.

The department is led by a Director-General appointed by decree. Marwan Ahmed bin Ghalita has held the post since July 2024, under Decree No. 44 of 2024, after seventeen years running RERA; before him Sultan Butti bin Mejren led the department for most of the freehold era. The department reports to the Executive Council of Dubai, chaired by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

DLD, RERA and the Rental Dispute Centre

Three names share the work, and most of the confusion on the subject is a question sent to the wrong one. The RERA page draws the same line from the regulator's side.

The line that matters most: a complaint about a landlord goes to the tribunal, a complaint about an agent goes to RERA, and a question about a deed, a fee or a registration goes to the department itself.

The title deed

The department's certificate of ownership, one page in Arabic and English under its seal, naming the owner, the unit, the plot, the registered area and any mortgage. It is an electronic record now; the paper is a print of it, and an owner downloads a copy from Dubai REST at any time. Before a deposit changes hands on a resale, verify the seller's deed through the department's free title deed verification: the certificate number and year printed on the deed, and the property type, return the record it belongs to, and a newer deed's QR code opens the same check. Beside it sits the Property Status Enquiry, also free and without a login, which takes the same deed number, or a Makani number, and returns whether the property is blocked or restrained by any authority, whether it carries a Dubai Municipality violation, whether an active rental-dispute case is registered against it, and whether it sits in a freehold area. The title deed has what to read on one and what a deed does not prove.

Ejari

The department's registry of tenancy contracts, since 2010, and the certificate the rest of the city's administration reads: DEWA, the immigration authority, the schools, the parking permit, and the Rental Dispute Centre, which will not hear a case on a contract that was never registered. Registration is done in Dubai REST for the department's fee of AED 120 plus the AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation fees, or at a typing centre or trustee office for around AED 220 with the centre's charge. A renewal is a fresh registration at the same price, and the old contract has to be closed before a new tenant's registration will go through. Ejari has the registration and renewing it the renewal; the cancellation is a request of its own, made by the landlord while the contract runs or by either side once it has expired.

The rental index and the rent increase calculator

The department's measure of what similar homes rent for, built from Ejari's own contracts, and the free calculator on its website and in Dubai REST that applies Decree No. 43 of 2013 to your rent: nothing where the rent is within 10% of the index, then 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% steps as the gap widens, and only ever with ninety days' written notice. The index and the calculator have been the department's own since Law No. 4 of 2019 moved them from RERA, though the market still calls them RERA's. In January 2025 the department announced a "smart" version of the index that grades each building and moves its benchmark with the grade; how a building is graded is on the department's page, and the rental index explainer has the bands and the notice rule. The rent increase calculator on this site works the bands on your own figures and prints the date the notice was due by.

Oqood

The department's interim register for property that does not exist yet. An off-plan sale is recorded on it by the developer under Law No. 13 of 2008, the buyer's name against the unit on the plan, until the building is finished and a deed can be written; a sale that is not on it is void. The registration fee is the same 4% a completed purchase pays, and the certificate it produces is what the visa desk and the bank read until the deed exists. Oqood has who registers it, when, and what to do if the developer is slow.

Checking a project's status

The department publishes the status of every registered project, free and without a login, under the name Project Status Enquiry, or Mashrooi, on its website and in Dubai REST. Search by project name or number and it returns the developer and its registration, the escrow account, the completion percentage RERA's inspectors have certified, the registered start and completion dates, the number of units, and the inspection photographs. It is the figure to check before the next instalment on an off-plan home, and the page to read before an expression of interest is paid on a launch. Off-plan or resale sets what the completion percentage means beside a finished home's deed.

The transfer, at a trustee office

A completed home changes hands at a registration trustee: one of the private offices the department licenses to conduct transfers on its behalf, nineteen of them on the department's list on the day this page was written, spread across the city, each with its own hours. Both sides attend, or a notarised power of attorney does, the buyer's manager's cheques are handed over, the developer's no-objection certificate and the bank's letters are checked, the department's fee is paid, and the seller's deed is cancelled and the buyer's issued the same morning. The trustee's own fee is fixed by the department, not the office. The cost of buying has the whole morning's bill, item by item.

The residence visas

The department runs the property side of two residence visas. The ten-year Golden Visa for the owner of property worth AED 2,000,000 or more is applied for through its desk: on the day this page was written the department's service page put the investor's own fees at AED 9,884.75 in total, of which AED 4,020 is the department's, with AED 5,774.50 for each family member and AED 318.75 to open the family file, a processing time of seven to ten business days, and the application made in person at the Al Manara centre, the Cube, at Dubai World Trade Centre or through one of the department's registered agents. Beneath it sits a two-year property investor visa whose threshold the department has changed more than once; the Golden Visa page has what counts toward the two million and what happens if you sell, and the department's service pages carry the figures of the day.

Service charges and Mollak

Every jointly owned building's annual budget is approved by RERA under Law No. 6 of 2019, and the charge per square foot that follows is collected through Mollak, the department's system: the invoice is issued through it, paid through it, and the receipt it produces is what a trustee office asks for at a transfer. Service charges has what the charge pays for, how Mollak is paid, and what the charge does to a yield.

The fees

The department's fees are regulation, published, and the same at every office. The ones a resident meets, on the day this page was written:

Most fees carry the AED 10 knowledge fee and AED 10 innovation fee on top, and the trustee's fee carries VAT; the 4% does not. The percentages scale with the price and the fixed fees do not, which is why a studio's fees are a larger share of its price than a villa's. The cost of buying works a two-million purchase through, cash and mortgaged.

The website and the apps

The department's website is dubailand.gov.ae. Its services live there and in Dubai REST, the Real Estate Self Transaction app, which is the department in a phone: an owner's deeds and Ejari certificates, the rental calculator, the broker, permit, project and title-deed checks that need no login, the complaint forms, and, signed in with UAE Pass, registrations and payments. Mollak carries the service-charge invoices; Trakheesi, the permit system, is the brokers' rather than the public's, and the Trakheesi page has how to read the permit number it puts on every listing. The department also publishes a list of the brokers and brokerages it licenses, searchable by name.

Its open-data portal is the other half. The department publishes its registers as data: transactions, sales, mortgages and gifts with the area, the property type and the price, the rent register with every new lease and renewal, the projects with their status, the licensed brokers and developers, the valuations, every land parcel, building and unit, each downloadable, with the older years on Dubai Pulse, the city's data platform. This site reads the sale and rent registers every night. On 15 September 2026 the sale register held 1,095,957 residential sales in Dubai since December 1997, 165,872 of them in the twelve months to that day, 120,961 off-plan and 44,911 completed resales; the rent register held 1,707,517 residential contracts since September 2023, 560,379 of them registered in the year, 228,621 new leases and 331,758 renewals. Every community and building page on this site prints what was actually paid there from those records, and the reports are the same registers read as a market. DXB Interact, the transactions site most people find first, is not the department's: it is a brokerage's reading of the same open data, and DXB Interact explained has who runs it, how to read a row on it and what any reading of the register leaves out.

Where it is, and how to reach it

The department's headquarters is on Baniyas Road in Deira, on the Creek, P.O. Box 1166, Makani 30404 94991, with RERA and the Rental Dispute Centre in the same building. The call centre is 800 4488 inside the UAE, which also answers on WhatsApp, and the website carries a live chat. On the day this page was written its customer-service hours were Monday to Thursday 7:30 am to 3:30 pm and Friday 7:30 am to noon, with phone, email and chat support to 4:30 pm Monday to Friday. Most residents never need the building: a lease is registered in the app or at a typing centre, a purchase completes at a trustee office, and the checks that matter are free online. The building is for the visa desk, the tribunal and the cases the app cannot close.

Sixty-six years, in ten lines

• 1960. The department is inaugurated in January by Sheikh Rashid, to register land in a town of a few tens of thousands.
• 2002. Sheikh Mohammed announces that foreigners may own property in designated areas, and the freehold market begins on the strength of the announcement, four years before the law.
• 2006. Law No. 7 of 2006 creates the real property register in its modern form and, in Article 4, the right of non-nationals to own freehold in the areas the Ruler designates. The freehold areas are its map.
• 2007. Law No. 16 of 2007 sets up RERA inside the department; Law No. 8 of 2007 requires every off-plan instalment to sit in an escrow account.
• 2008. Law No. 13 of 2008 creates the interim register, Oqood, and voids an off-plan sale that is not on it; Law No. 33 of 2008 fixes the ninety days' notice a rent change needs.
• 2010. Ejari begins registering tenancies.
• 2013. Decree No. 26 of 2013 creates the Rental Dispute Centre; Decree No. 43 of 2013 sets the five rent-increase bands; Law No. 7 of 2013 gives the department its present constitution.
• 2019. Law No. 6 of 2019 rewrites the law of jointly owned property and the service charge; Law No. 4 of 2019 restates RERA and moves Ejari and the rental index to the department itself.
• 2024. Decree No. 44 of 2024 makes RERA's founding chief executive, Marwan bin Ghalita, Director-General of the department.
• 2025. The department announces the smart rental index, grading buildings.

The dates of the laws are as the laws print them. For the founding, this page follows the department's own account of itself; the press sometimes puts the early years a year out either way.