Mollak, Dubai’s service charge system

Mollak is the Dubai Land Department's system for service charges. Every jointly owned building and community in Dubai is registered on it, every year's budget is approved through it, every invoice an owner receives is issued from it, and every dirham paid goes into a bank account opened through it in the building's own name. The word is Arabic for "owners", and the system was built for them: before it, a service charge was whatever the developer or its manager said it was, paid into whatever account they named. Since 2019 the rate on the invoice is one RERA has approved, the account is the building's, and the record of what has been paid is the department's, which is why a Dubai sale cannot complete until that record is clear.

This page is the system itself: how an owner logs in and pays, what the invoice's lines mean, what happens when it is not paid, where a dispute goes, and the owners' committee and management company behind it under the 2019 law. The service charges page has what the charge pays for, how the rate is set and what buildings commonly cost a square foot.

What Mollak is

RERA, the department's regulatory agency, launched Mollak in 2019, in the same season Law No. 6 of 2019 on jointly owned property was issued; the law is dated 4 September 2019 and came into force sixty days after its publication, and the system is the machinery the law assumes. The department describes it as an integrated system to monitor the accounts related to service charges, and it does four things. It registers every jointly owned property, the management company that runs it and that company's staff, its auditor and its bank. It takes each building's annual budget from the management company, audited by a firm RERA has accepted, and records RERA's approval of the rate. It issues the invoices to every registered owner, quarterly on most buildings and annually where the budget says so. And it holds the money: the general fund and the reserve fund of each building sit in accounts opened through Mollak at a licensed bank, in the building's name, which the law puts beyond the reach of the management company's creditors.

Two doors, and which one a person needs is the first thing to know. The portal at mollak.dubailand.gov.ae is the system's own front: management companies, auditors and banks log in there to file budgets, upload invoices and report. An owner does not need an account on it, and an owner searching for a "Mollak login" is usually at the wrong door. The owner's door is Dubai REST, the department's app, which is where the invoices appear and are paid. What the portal offers an owner without any login is the Service Charge Index, the public table of every building's approved rate, and a directory of the registered management companies.

Logging in and paying

An owner sees and pays the invoice in Dubai REST, signed in with UAE Pass. As the department describes the app on the day this page was written, its property wallet lists each property registered to the person, with its current price, its rental return and its service charges beside it, and the service charge is paid from there. A buyer whose deed has just issued finds the home in the wallet once the register has it, and the first invoice follows the management company's next run.

There are three other routes, as the Mollak portal's own payment page lists them. A bank transfer to the account printed on the invoice, after which the payment slip is sent to the management company at the email in the invoice's footer, because a transfer the company has not matched to an invoice is a balance still showing as unpaid. The management company's own portal or office, where it has one; the larger community managers do. And noqodi, the Dubai Government's payment platform, by wallet, card or net banking. Whichever route, the reference on the payment is the invoice number, and the proof that it landed is the balance in the app, not the transfer confirmation.

A statement of account, every invoice and every payment since the building was registered, is the management company's to issue on request. An owner planning a sale asks for it early, because what it shows is what the no-objection certificate will show.

Reading the invoice

The invoice is the management company's tax invoice, generated by Mollak on the approved budget, and its lines are the same on every building. From a real one on the department's portal:

The detail pages behind the summary show what the general fund rate is made of at the finest grain: security, cleaning, pest control and waste under services; landscaping, the mechanical and electrical contract, water treatment, the pool and gym and a contingency line under maintenance; the common areas' DEWA, their district cooling and the sewerage charge under utilities; then the management fee, the insurance, the master community's share and a community improvement line. A chiller-free building carries the flats' cooling in that utilities head too, which is why its rate looks high beside a neighbour whose residents pay Empower directly.

The approved rate, and the reserve fund

Article 27 of the law is the one an owner should know by number. A management company may not charge owners, or collect from them, any amount whatsoever without RERA's approval; RERA may not approve a budget that a certified audit firm has not; and a temporary budget may be approved to keep the building running while the full one is examined, which is what "provisional" on the invoice means. Each owner's share of the approved budget is the ratio of the unit's area to the total area of the property, under Article 25, which is why the invoice prints the area and the rate rather than a lump sum.

The approved rate is public. The Service Charge Index, on the Mollak portal, the department's website and in Dubai REST, is searched by master community, project, usage and budget year, and returns the rate RERA approved for that building that year. It is where a buyer checks a figure before believing a seller, where a rise in the rate is explained by the budget behind it, and where the service charges page's ranges come from.

The money sits in two accounts. Article 30 requires a service charges account for each property at a bank licensed in the emirate, into which collections are deposited within seven working days, and puts it beyond attachment by the management company's creditors: a company that fails owes its own creditors, not the building's money. The reserve fund, the cash held to meet an emergency or replace the lifts, the chillers, the façade when their time comes, is a separate account, and it may not be spent on anything but a critical emergency without RERA's approval first. The invoice shows both rates, and the account title on it says which fund a payment is going to.

One-year budgets are the rule. On 10 December 2025 the department announced the first three-year fixed service fee budget, for the Palm Jumeirah master community, approved by RERA through Mollak, with the one-year model still available; whether it spreads is a thing to watch in the index.

Not paying: the NOC at sale

The owner pays, whatever the lease says. Article 16 puts the service charges on the owner unless the tenancy contract says otherwise, and adds that an owner is not discharged from paying because the tenant failed to. A landlord who wrote the charge into a lease and did not collect it still owes the building.

Article 32 is what makes the debt bite. The management company has a lien on every unit for its unpaid charges, and a unit may not be disposed of until they are paid. In practice that is the no-objection certificate. When a home is sold, the seller applies to the developer or the management company for the NOC; the company reads the account on Mollak; the certificate says the charges are paid to date, with the current period apportioned to the day of transfer, and names any balance to be settled first. Without it the registration trustee, the department-licensed office where the transfer is done, will not transfer, and the title deed is not proof the charges are paid, because the deed records ownership and Mollak records the account. In the twelve months to 31 August 2026 the register recorded 35,161 resales of completed apartments in Dubai, and every one of them passed this check before the deed changed hands. The cost of buying has the NOC's fee, conventionally the seller's, and the sell property in Dubai page has where it falls in the sale.

For an owner who is not selling, the same article gives the management company a road that does not run through a trial. It serves a written notice, in a form RERA has approved, demanding payment within thirty days. If the thirty days pass, the claim is enforceable before the execution judge at the Rental Dispute Centre as it stands; the judge may order the unit sold at public auction to recover the charges, and the owner pays the court fees and the advocates' costs the judge awards. What the company may not do, under Article 29, is take matters into its own hands: bar an owner from the unit, or cut a service, to force payment. The law sets no late-payment penalty of its own; a building's approved budget or its management regulation may state one, and the invoice's notes are where it appears.

Disputes

Two kinds, and they go to two places. A dispute about the money, an invoice an owner says is wrong, in its area, its rate or a charge the approved budget does not carry, or a company's claim against an owner, goes to the Rental Dispute Centre: Article 42 gives it exclusive jurisdiction over every dispute under the law, and the RERA-approved invoice is the reference the tribunal reads, as its chairman put it in the department's announcement of January 2020 on the owner's duty to pay. An owner who believes the rate itself is too high argues with the budget, not the invoice, and the budget is RERA's decision.

A complaint about the management company's conduct, a service paid for and not delivered, a budget not explained, accounts not shown, an owners' committee not convened, goes first to the owners' committee, which the law obliges to receive it and, if it is not resolved within fourteen days, to take it to RERA. RERA inspects, and may replace a management company for inefficiency, on its own motion or on the committee's request. A complaint straight to the agency goes through the department's complaint service, in Dubai REST and on its website, with the invoice, the correspondence and the dates.

Owners associations

Dubai's first strata law, Law No. 27 of 2007, created an owners association in every jointly owned building: a legal person made up of all the owners, with a board and an annual general meeting, running the building the way a condominium association does elsewhere. Law No. 6 of 2019 replaced it. The association as a legal person went, and in its place the law puts the management of every building into one of three categories, under Article 18. A major project, which RERA designates, is managed by its developer, or by a management company the developer appoints with RERA's approval; in practice that is the master developers' communities, run by their own management arms, Emaar's, Nakheel's and Dubai Holding's among them. A hotel project is managed by a hotel management company. Everything else is managed by a specialised management company that RERA selects and contracts, licensed by the agency and registered on Mollak with its staff.

Beside the management company, every building has an owners' committee, under Articles 22 to 24. It is formed once a tenth of the units are registered to owners, and it has up to nine members, appointed by RERA from the owners who apply, including its chairman and deputy; a member must be an owner with the charges paid up, of good character, who attends, and the developer may sit on it only while it still holds unsold units. It meets at least every three months, each member with one vote whatever they own. What it may do is check that the management company performs, review the annual budget before it goes to RERA and ask for the financial reports, receive owners' complaints and escalate them, propose changes to how the common parts are used, and ask RERA to replace the management company of a building in the third category. What it may not do is manage: it does not hire the contractors, hold the money or set the rate.

That leaves an owner with less of a vote than the old law gave and more of a regulator. Nobody elects the committee, and nobody votes on the budget; RERA appoints the one and approves the other. An owner's levers are a seat on the committee, a complaint the committee must carry, the tribunal for a wrong invoice, and the index, which prints what every comparable building pays. The market still says "owners association", the management companies still call themselves OA managers and the invoice still says "OA management company", but the thing the words describe changed in 2019, and a buyer asking who runs a building gets the answer from the index and the directory: the master community, the management company, and the committee.

Before the first invoice

A buyer meets Mollak twice: once at the NOC, when the seller's account has to be clear, and again a few months after the deed, when the first invoice arrives in the app. Between the two, the checks on the service charges page are the ones to run: the building's approved rate in the index against its neighbours', the seller's last two invoices and the audited budget, the reserve fund's balance, whether the cooling is in the rate, and whether a levy is pending. The rate is the number that turns a gross yield into a net one, and on this system it is a number that is looked up, not guessed.