Dubai REST, the Dubai Land Department’s app

Dubai REST is the Dubai Land Department's app, and the four capitals stand for Real Estate Self Transaction: the department's name for the idea that an owner, a tenant or a buyer should be able to do the department's paperwork from a phone rather than at a counter. It is free, it is published by the department itself, and it is where most of the things the other guides on this site describe actually happen: the Ejari registration, the rent increase calculator, the title deed check, the service charge invoice, the permit on an advert. Here is what it is, how to get in, what each service does, and what it cannot do. The date this page was checked is printed at the top, and it matters more here than on the other guides: the department adds and moves services with each release, and a description of an app ages faster than a description of a law.

What Dubai REST is

The Dubai Land Department is the emirate's registrar. It keeps the title register, the sale register and the rent register, and since 2019 the whole landlord and tenant relationship that its regulator, RERA, used to hold (the department and its regulator, explained). Dubai REST is the public's front door to those registers. The department launched it in 2017 and has built it out since; on the day this page was written it carried, in one app, the services a resident deals with most: Ejari, the rent calculator, the deed check, the Mollak service-charge account, the broker and permit registers, the off-plan project register, the standard forms and the complaint desk, and, once you are signed in, a page of your own properties and contracts.

Two things it is not. It is not RERA's app: RERA is the regulator inside the department, and the checks people call "RERA checks", the broker and the permit, are Dubai REST services. And it is not the only way in. The checks and the calculator sit on the department's website as well, and Ejari can be done at a typing centre or a registration trustee's office for a service charge on top of the fee. The app is the department's own route, and the cheapest.

How to download it

Search for "Dubai REST" on the App Store or on Google Play. The line to read before installing is the publisher, which is the Dubai Land Department; the name is two ordinary words, and the publisher is what tells the department's app from anything else the search returns. It is free, it runs in Arabic and English, and there is no charge to install it or to use the checks. The fees inside it are the department's own fees for the services that carry one, Ejari above all, and they are the same fees a counter charges, without the counter's service charge.

How to log in

The checks need no account. The rent calculator, the broker register, the permit check, the deed verification and the project status can be used the moment the app opens, which is the reason a buyer or a tenant should have it even if they never own anything here. Anything that is yours needs a login: your properties, your deeds, your Ejari contracts, your service-charge invoices, a form waiting for your signature, a complaint you have filed. On the day this page was written the login was UAE Pass, the federal digital identity.

UAE Pass is its own app, from the federal government, and it has to exist before Dubai REST can use it. A resident registers it with an Emirates ID and verifies it, with a face scan in the app or at one of its kiosks, and the verified account is the one the department accepts for anything that touches a title. A visitor without an Emirates ID can open a UAE Pass on a passport, but that account is not verified, and which of the department's services accept it is the department's to decide and has changed. An owner abroad should expect to need the verified account, or a power of attorney held by someone who has one, which is how most purchases from overseas are completed in any case.

Check a title deed, or download your own

Enter the certificate number and the year from a deed, choose the property type, and the app returns the record the deed belongs to: the property and the owner's name, to compare with the paper in front of you. Newer deeds carry a QR code that opens the same check. It is free, it takes a minute, and it is the first thing to do when a seller produces a deed, before a deposit is discussed. Signed in, an owner sees their own properties listed under their name and can download the electronic deed for each; a buyer who has just completed at the trustee's office finds the new deed there the same day. How to read the deed, and what the plot and the area on it mean, is a page of its own.

Register, renew or cancel an Ejari

The registry of tenancy contracts lives in the app, and this is the service most people install it for. The contract is prepared on the unified form, which the app drafts from the property's own record once the landlord or the agent selects the unit, and the registration follows from the same file. The department's fee is AED 120 plus AED 20 of knowledge and innovation fees, against something over AED 200 at a typing centre. What it asks for is the signed contract, the title deed, the identification of both sides and the DEWA premise number of the property, which is on any DEWA bill for it. A renewal is filed against the existing registration, so the new contract is the only real upload; a cancellation is the landlord's or the manager's, once the tenant has handed over. The thing that goes wrong is the one the Ejari guide spends a section on: a property holds one active registration at a time, and a previous tenant's that was never cancelled stops yours. Ask before you sign. The contract itself, clause by clause, is another page.

Work out the permitted rent increase

The department's rental increase calculator is in the app, free and without a login. Give it the property, the type, the bedrooms and the current rent, or simply the Ejari number, and it prints the increase the index allows, if any. The figure is the one the Rental Dispute Centre will apply, so it is not advice; it is the ruling in advance, and either side of a renewal should print it before the conversation. This site's own rent increase calculator shows the bands worked on your figures, with the market rent seeded from what tenants in your area actually paid and the date the notice was due by; the department's remains the binding one.

See and pay service charges

Mollak, the department's service-charge system, is the part of the app an owner opens most often. The invoices for a jointly owned building are issued through it, each one showing the RERA-approved rate per square foot it was calculated from, and payment goes into the building's own bank account, held for that building and audited. The same account is where an unpaid balance lives, and an unpaid balance is what stops a sale: no management company issues the no-objection certificate a transfer needs until it is clear. Service charges, what the rate covers and what a fair one looks like, is its own guide.

Check a broker, a permit or an office

Enter a broker's name or BRN and the app returns the licence: the person, the brokerage that sponsors the card, and whether it is current. Enter the permit number from an advert, or scan the QR code on it, and it returns the permit's record: the property it covers, the broker it was issued to, and whether it is still valid. The registration trustees and the licensed brokerages are in the same registers. These three checks are the whole reason the regulator publishes its registers, and every McCone listing prints its permit number under the home's details so a reader can run the second one before calling.

Check an off-plan project

Enter a project and the app returns its registration with RERA, its escrow account and its completion percentage, which is the figure a buyer's instalments are released against. A project that is not on the register is not one to pay into, whatever the brochure says, and a completion percentage that has not moved for a year is a question to ask before the next instalment. What the register holds for a buyer between the contract and the deed, the Oqood, and how an off-plan purchase differs from a resale, are two pages of their own.

Sign the forms, and file a complaint

The standard forms that a sale runs on are signed in the app: the Form A, the owner's listing agreement with a broker, and the Form F, the contract between buyer and seller that the registration trustee transfers the title on. The broker prepares the form, each party signs it against their UAE Pass, and the signed copy sits in the account of everyone who signed. A complaint about a broker, a brokerage or a developer is filed here too; on the day this page was written the service asked for the evidence, the advert, the receipt, the messages, and undertook to respond within five business days. A complaint about a rent, a deposit or an eviction is not one for the app or the regulator: it goes to the Rental Dispute Centre, which has its own filing.

What it cannot do

• Transfer a title. The sale itself is completed at a registration trustee's office, in person or by power of attorney, and the app holds the paperwork on either side of that hour: the signed Form F before it, the new deed after it
• Find you a home. It is the register's front door, not a portal; the home is found elsewhere, and checked here
• Hear a dispute. A rental case is opened at the Rental Dispute Centre, and a dispute about a sale contract, a refund or damages is for the courts
• Connect the electricity. DEWA is its own authority with its own app, and it asks for the Ejari number Dubai REST produced
• Tell you your address. The ten-digit Makani number is Dubai Municipality's, not the department's, and lives in the Makani app
• Tell you what a home is worth. The registers it fronts record what was paid, and the department publishes those records as open data; this site reads them every night, and the reports print what every community and building actually sold and rented for

A few of the department's services still need a desk or a trustee rather than a phone, a replacement for a lost deed among them, and the set moves with each release; when a service is not where this page says, the department's website carries the same one, and its call centre is 800 4488 inside the UAE.

Common problems

• The login loops, or a service says the account is not verified. Dubai REST accepts a verified UAE Pass, which means one registered on an Emirates ID and confirmed with the face scan or at a kiosk; a passport-only account opens the app and not much else
• A property you own is not under your name. The deed's record carries the identification the property was bought on, and if that was a different passport, or a name spelt differently, the account does not find it. The department's call centre, or a trustee's office with the deed and your Emirates ID, links the record
• Ejari rejects the contract. Three causes cover most cases: an earlier registration on the unit was never cancelled; the unit, the DEWA premise number or the owner's name on the contract does not match the deed; or a document is missing, most often the landlord's identification
• A deed will not verify. Check the certificate number and the year, which are both on the deed; an off-plan buyer holds an Oqood, which is a different register and will not verify as a title deed; and a deed re-issued after a subdivision or a transfer carries a new number
• No service-charge invoice appears. The building's management company may not have issued the period's invoice through Mollak yet, or the property may be one Mollak does not cover; ask the management company for the invoice number before assuming nothing is owed
• The service has moved. Every release rearranges the menus; the names on this page are what a service does, not where the button was on the day

The app is the department made portable, and the habit worth forming is the free one: before a deposit, a deed check and a permit check, a minute each, on the phone you already have.