Selling Off-Plan in Dubai
How an Assignment Before Handover Actually Works
Before handover you do not own a title deed — you own a position on the interim register, and selling it means assigning that position to a new buyer with the developer’s consent. The Land Department’s fees for this are published and precise. The conditions deciding whether you can sell at all are written into your contract by your developer, and published nowhere. This guide separates the two.
What You Are Actually Selling Before Handover
An off-plan unit in Dubai has no title deed, because the thing a title deed describes does not physically exist yet. What exists is an entry on the interim — or provisional — real estate register, created when the developer registers your sale and purchase agreement through the Land Department’s Oqood system. Our guide to Oqood registration covers how that entry is created and why it matters.
Selling before handover therefore is not a transfer of ownership in the ordinary sense. It is an assignment: you pass your position under the SPA — the unit, the remaining payment plan, and the obligations that come with it — to an incoming buyer, and the interim registration is updated to name them instead of you. The market usually calls it a resale. The register calls it a change to the initial registration.
Two consents sit in the middle of that. The first is the developer’s. The Land Department’s property sale registration service lists a developer no-objection certificate among the documents required in freehold areas, obtainable through the Dubai REST app. The second is the Land Department’s own registration of the transfer, which carries the published fees set out below.
Here is the distinction that matters more than any other on this page, and the one most guides blur. The Land Department’s fees are published and knowable in advance. Your developer’s conditions are not. How much of the price you must have paid before the developer will consent, what it will charge for the NOC, whether it levies a separate assignment fee — all of that is commercial, set by each developer in each contract, and absent from every official fee schedule. Any figure you read online for those is a market convention someone has repeated, not a rule that binds your unit — so read your SPA and get the developer’s terms in writing before you market the unit or agree a completion date.
Off-Plan Resale at a Glance
What is fixed, and what your contract decides
The Fees You Can Verify — and the Ones You Cannot
Every figure marked Published below is taken from a Dubai Land Department eServices page. Every figure marked otherwise is set commercially and is not in any official schedule, so we do not quote a number for it.
| Line | What Applies | وضعیت |
|---|---|---|
| DLD fee — seller share | 2% of the sale value, on the initial (off-plan) sale registration | Published |
| DLD fee — buyer share | 2% of the sale value, on the initial (off-plan) sale registration | Published |
| Knowledge fee | AED 10 | Published |
| Innovation fee | AED 10 | Published |
| Developer self-registration | AED 1,000, payable by the developer on the Oqood provisional registration | Published |
| Registration deadline | Contracts must be registered within 90 days of signing | Published |
| Post-handover: title deed | AED 250 issuance fee, once the unit is on the title-deed register | Published |
| Post-handover: service partner | AED 4,000 + VAT at AED 500,000 or more; AED 2,000 + VAT below that | Published |
| Post-handover: map fee | AED 225 within Dubai Municipality, AED 100 outside, AED 250 for villas and apartments | Published |
| Terminating an initial registration | AED 600 plus AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation fees | Published |
| Developer NOC fee | Set commercially by each developer. Get it in writing before you price the deal | Not published |
| Developer assignment / admin fee | Set commercially by each developer, where one is charged at all | Not published |
| Minimum % paid before resale | A condition of your own SPA. There is no emirate-wide DLD threshold | Not a DLD rule |
| Broker commission | A matter of contract between you and your agency. No official rate is published | Not published |
Published figures are taken from the Dubai Land Department eServices pages for Request to Register the Initial Sale, Property Sale Registration و Request for Termination of Initial Registration, retrieved 23 August 2026. VAT is excluded except where the DLD page states it. Fees and procedures may be amended — confirm the current schedule with the Land Department or a Real Estate Registration Trustee before you transact.
Six Steps From Decision to Completed Assignment
In this order. The most common and most expensive mistake is running steps three and four the other way round.
Thinking about exiting an off-plan unit before handover?
Tell us the project and where you are in the payment plan. TruHauz will read the assignment clause with you and tell you what the exit realistically looks like.
Three Things That Decide Whether You Can Sell At All
None of them is the price. All three are settled before a buyer is ever involved.
Your SPA Sets the Threshold, Not the Law
The most-asked question about off-plan resale in Dubai — how much must I have paid first — does not have a legal answer. The Land Department does not publish an emirate-wide percentage. The number that binds you is the one written into your own sale and purchase agreement by your developer. Anyone quoting you a universal figure is quoting a market convention, not a rule, and it may not be your rule.
The NOC Is a Gate, Not a Formality
A developer no-objection certificate is listed by the Land Department among the documents required to register a freehold transfer. Until the developer issues it, there is no deal to register — and it will not be issued while your account is out of order. Start the conversation with the developer before you market the unit, not after you have shaken hands with a buyer and agreed a completion date you cannot control.
The Alternative to Selling Is Governed Too
If you cannot pay and cannot sell, you do not simply exit. Law No. 13 of 2008 sets what a developer may retain on an off-plan default, keyed to construction progress, and the Land Department runs a formal termination-of-initial-registration service with a published fee of AED 620 and a documented notice process. Selling at a disappointing price is usually the better of the two outcomes, and the option decays as the building goes up.
پرسشهای متداول
The questions off-plan sellers in Dubai ask most often before they market a unit.
Know Your Exit Before You Need It
TruHauz reads the assignment clause, checks the developer’s current conditions and prices the unit against live stock in the same project — before you list. Tell us what you are holding.
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