Most cost guides open with a number somebody invented. This one opens with the catalogue we refresh daily, narrowed to the two emirates whose fee schedules we have read at source — Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Every catalogue figure below is read from live fields when this page is built, so it moves when the market moves instead of ageing quietly. Every fee percentage is quoted from a Dubai Land Department service page, the Dubai legislation portal, ADREC’s DARI platform or the Federal Tax Authority.
Three things are missing on purpose, and the last section says why: no per-square-foot figures, no loan-to-value ratio, and no developer-by-developer fee table.
What the live catalogue says the entry ticket is
Of the 1,215 off-plan projects currently on sale across the UAE, 1,065 are in Dubai or Abu Dhabi — 961 and 104 respectively. The median entry price, meaning the cheapest published price in each project, is AED 1,707,334 in Dubai and AED 3,105,085 in Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is not a dearer version of Dubai so much as a far shorter and far more concentrated shelf.
The first instalment is the number that decides whether a purchase is affordable this month. Across those projects the median booking step on the developer’s headline plan is 20%: 415 projects open at 10% or less, 844 at 20% or less, and 203 ask for more than 20% to reserve. 171 projects publish at least one plan that runs past handover.
Delivery is clustered. Among the Dubai and Abu Dhabi projects still selling with a published handover year of 2026 or later, the largest cohorts are 2027 (311), 2028 (233), 2029 (161), 2026 (154). That matters to cost as much as to timing, because almost every recurring charge in this guide starts on the day the keys are handed over, not the day the payment plan ends.
These are counts from our own catalogue at the moment this page was last built, not a market-wide statistic — 1,065 projects is what we track on sale in the two emirates, not everything that exists. The live version of the same arithmetic sits on the market pulse page.
The registration fee is the biggest single line, and the two emirates differ
In Dubai the fee is set by Executive Council Resolution No. 30 of 2013, which prices the registration of a property sale at 4% of the value of the sale contract. Article 3(1) of the same resolution provides that, unless agreed otherwise, the fee is shared equally by seller and purchaser. The Land Department’s off-plan service page — request to register the initial sale — states it in exactly that split form: seller 2% of the sale value, purchaser 2%, plus AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation fees, with a further AED 1,000 self-registration fee borne by the developer on the Oqood portal.
The words “unless agreed otherwise” are where the money actually moves. Your sale and purchase agreement allocates the 4% however the parties agree, and a launch offer advertising a “DLD fee waiver” is describing a developer choosing to absorb the buyer’s share, not a discount granted by the government. Read the clause; do not read the banner.
Two further Dubai rules travel with the fee. The Land Department’s service conditions require the contract to be registered in the provisional register within 90 days of signing. And under Law No. 13 of 2008, any disposition of an off-plan unit is void unless it is entered in the Interim Property Register. Registration is not paperwork; it is the thing that makes the purchase exist.
Abu Dhabi charges half as much and enforces it faster. ADREC’s DARI platform prices off-plan unit sale registration at 2% of the total sale price, and adds AED 10,000 for late registration — late meaning more than 21 days from the contract date. Twenty-one days, not ninety.
This guide covers Dubai and Abu Dhabi only. The other five emirates register through their own authorities at their own rates, and we have not read those rate cards at source — so we publish no registration percentage for Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Quwain or Fujairah rather than repeating one.
A worked example: Dubai, at the catalogue median
Take the live Dubai median entry price of AED 1,707,334 and a headline plan with the median 20% booking step. Nothing below is estimated: the price is ours, each percentage is quoted from a government page in our sources, and the arithmetic is done when the page is built.
- →Booking instalment (20%): AED 341,467.
- →Registration fee, 4% of the sale contract: AED 68,293 in total. Split as the resolution’s default, that is AED 34,147 from the buyer; where the SPA puts the whole fee on the buyer, it is the full AED 68,293.
- →Knowledge and innovation fees: AED 20.
- →Developer self-registration on Oqood: AED 1,000 — the developer’s line, not yours, but it sits on the same fee schedule.
That single clause on who bears the 4% is worth roughly AED 34,147 on a purchase at the median, which is why it earns an email before signing rather than a shrug afterwards. One thing that is not on the list: VAT on the home. The Federal Tax Authority treats supplies of residential property as generally exempt, and zero-rates the first supply of a residential property within three years of completion — which is what buying a new unit from its developer is. VAT still lands on services: the Land Department’s fee pages quote trustee and service-partner charges expressly as “+ VAT”. Also absent is an agency fee: on a direct off-plan purchase the developer normally pays the broker, so the buyer’s side of that line is usually zero — but that is market practice rather than a published rule, so confirm it in writing rather than assuming it.
A worked example: Abu Dhabi, at the catalogue median
The Abu Dhabi median entry price across the 104 selling projects in our catalogue is AED 3,105,085. Applying ADREC’s published rate:
- →Off-plan registration, 2% of the total sale price: AED 62,102.
- →Late registration: AED 10,000, if the sale is registered more than 21 days after the contract date.
- →Booking instalment: set by the plan; the 20% median across both emirates puts it near AED 621,017 at this price.
The comparison people expect — “Abu Dhabi is half the fee” — is true as a rate and worth testing as a bill. Two per cent of the Abu Dhabi median is AED 62,102; four per cent of the Dubai median is AED 68,293. At today’s medians the lower rate does also produce the smaller cheque — but only because the gap between the two shelves is currently narrow enough for the rate to win. Rates are not costs until you multiply them by what is actually on sale. DARI also lets the parties choose who settles the registration fee, and which ownership form is being registered — ownership or musataha. We found no statutory default allocating the Abu Dhabi 2% between buyer and seller, so treat it as a contractual choice to settle before the SPA is signed rather than a split to discover at the payment screen.
If you borrow, the shape of the cost changes
Financing adds its own registration fees, and those are published. In Dubai, mortgage registration costs 0.25% of the mortgage value — of the loan, not the property — plus AED 250 for title deed issuance and AED 10 each in knowledge and innovation fees. The service-partner fee is AED 4,000 + VAT in standard cases and AED 5,000 + VAT for provisional (Oqood) cases, so the off-plan case is the dearer one. Where the developer registers an off-plan sale that already carries financing, the same fee page adds the 0.25% mortgage charge alongside the 2%/2% sale registration, AED 250 for the title deed and AED 250 for the unit or villa map.
What we do not put a number on here is how much you may borrow. The Central Bank’s mortgage regulations apply a materially tighter loan-to-value ceiling to property bought before it is built than to a completed home, but the exact ratio is an open question on this site and we have chosen not to publish one rather than repeat a figure we have not settled. Get the current ratio from your lender or the CBUAE rulebook, and size the deposit from that rather than from a brokerage page.
In Abu Dhabi the allocation of the cost is settled by law even though we could not verify the tariff itself: Article 37 of Law No. 3 of 2015 puts the expenses and fees of the mortgage and its registration on the mortgagor unless the parties agree otherwise. We have deliberately not quoted an Abu Dhabi mortgage registration percentage, because we could not confirm one against an ADREC, DARI or TAMM page.
The eligibility mechanics — what a lender is required to test, where the deposit may come from, how a loan reaches a unit that does not exist yet, and what early settlement may cost — are set out in financing an off-plan purchase.
The handover bill
Handover is the second invoice cluster, and it surprises people who budgeted only for the payment plan. Some of it is cheap and administrative; some of it is not.
The conversion from interim registration to a full title deed is the cheap part in Dubai. The Land Department’s fee schedules put the title deed certificate at AED 250 and the unit or villa map at AED 250, with the unified Dubai Municipality map at AED 225. There is no second 4% — the registration percentage was paid once, at the initial sale.
In Abu Dhabi the equivalent step is a DARI transaction transferring the unit from the initial register to the real estate register, with outstanding registration and Tawtheeq fees settled at that point. ADREC’s help material describes the flow but does not publish a rate card for it, so treat the amount as a question for your developer rather than a number you can look up.
Two Dubai fees are worth distinguishing, because they are routinely conflated. The service-partner (trustee) fee of AED 4,000 + VAT at or above AED 500,000, or AED 2,000 + VAT below it, belongs to a sale registered at a trustee office — the completed-property route. A developer registering your off-plan sale through Oqood pays the AED 1,000 self-registration fee instead. If someone quotes you both on the same off-plan purchase, ask which transaction they are describing.
The step-by-step version of handover — the snag list, acceptance, the defects period and the title deed filing — is in the off-plan buying process. The register mechanics behind it are in Oqood: registering an off-plan purchase in Dubai.
What it costs to keep
Service charges begin when the building is handed over, not when your payment plan ends. In Dubai they are regulated: RERA approves the charge for each jointly owned property through the Mollak system, and the Land Department publishes a service charge index that lets anyone look up the approved figure for a given community before buying. Using the index on the specific project, rather than accepting a brochure line, is the single most useful pre-purchase check on running costs. Where a developer has published a rate for a project in our catalogue we print it on that project’s page, but it comes from developer-distributed material rather than from the index itself.
On the tax side the position is genuinely simple: the UAE levies no annual property tax, and residential supplies sit outside the VAT charge — exempt in general, zero-rated on the first supply within three years of completion.
The recurring charge people miss is the municipality housing fee. The UAE Government Portal describes it as a tenant charge of 5% of yearly rent in Dubai, added to the monthly electricity and water bill, with an Abu Dhabi equivalent calculated at 5% on either the rental value or the rental index, whichever is higher, and likewise added to the utility bill. Because the portal frames the charge around tenancy, we make no claim either way about an owner-occupier’s own position — confirm that directly with Dubai Municipality or with the Abu Dhabi utility rather than inferring it from a guide.
Utility connection deposits and activation charges fall due in the same few weeks. Dubai’s are published and we set them out in connecting utilities: DEWA and ADDC. Abu Dhabi’s deposit amount is not published anywhere we could reach, which is why no figure for it appears on this site.
What we have deliberately left blank
Four omissions here are choices, not gaps.
- →No per-square-foot prices, and no unit-level figures. This site publishes project-level entry prices and nothing narrower. Per-sqft numbers invite exactly the false precision this guide is trying to replace, and unit-level inventory changes faster than any page can honestly track.
- →No loan-to-value ratio. The Central Bank does cap off-plan lending more tightly than lending on a completed home, but we have not settled the current figure to our own standard, so we print none. Ask your lender.
- →No utility deposit table for Abu Dhabi, and no district cooling figures anywhere. Dubai’s DEWA amounts are published and appear in our utilities guide. The Abu Dhabi equivalent is not published on any primary page we could reach, and district cooling deposits are set by the cooling provider rather than by a regulator. A guide that cites a government page for wording that page does not contain is worse than a guide that admits the gap.
- →No developer-by-developer fee list. Administrative charges — NOC fees, transfer administration, plan-change fees — are set by each developer, are not published centrally by either regulator, and change without notice. Ask for the developer’s current schedule in writing and attach it to your file.
Everything else in this guide is quoted from the Dubai Land Department’s service pages, the Dubai legislation portal, ADREC’s DARI platform, the Federal Tax Authority or the UAE Government Portal, each read at source while the guide was written.
Questions buyers ask
How much is the government fee on an off-plan purchase in Dubai?+
Four per cent of the sale contract value. Executive Council Resolution No. 30 of 2013 sets the rate and provides that it is shared equally between seller and purchaser unless agreed otherwise; the Land Department’s off-plan service page states it as 2% from the seller and 2% from the purchaser, plus AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation fees. Because the split is contractual, your SPA decides whether you pay 2% or 4%. At the current Dubai median entry price of AED 1,707,334, that is the difference between about AED 34,147 and about AED 68,293.
Is Abu Dhabi cheaper to buy off-plan in than Dubai?+
The rate is lower — ADREC registers an off-plan unit sale at 2% of the total sale price against Dubai’s 4% — but a rate is not a bill. At the current catalogue medians, 2% of the Abu Dhabi median (AED 3,105,085) is AED 62,102, while 4% of the Dubai median (AED 1,707,334) is AED 68,293. At today’s medians the lower rate does also produce the smaller cheque — but only because the gap between the two shelves is currently narrow enough for the rate to win. Rates are not costs until you multiply them by what is actually on sale. Abu Dhabi also charges AED 10,000 if registration happens more than 21 days after the contract date.
Do I pay the registration fee twice — once off-plan and again at handover?+
No. In Dubai the 4% is paid once, when the sale is entered in the provisional register. Converting that interim registration into a title deed at handover attracts only fixed charges: AED 250 for the title deed certificate and AED 250 for the unit or villa map, with the unified Dubai Municipality map at AED 225. In Abu Dhabi the equivalent step transfers the unit from the initial register to the real estate register on DARI, settling outstanding registration and Tawtheeq fees; ADREC publishes no rate card for it, so ask your developer.
Is there VAT on an off-plan home?+
Not on the property itself. The Federal Tax Authority treats supplies of residential property as generally exempt from VAT, and zero-rates the first supply of a residential property within three years of completion — which is what a purchase from the developer is. VAT does apply to services around the transaction: the Land Department quotes trustee and service-partner fees expressly as “+ VAT”.
How much can I borrow against an off-plan purchase?+
We do not publish a loan-to-value figure. The Central Bank’s mortgage regulations do apply a tighter ceiling to property bought before it is built than to a completed home, but the exact ratio is not something we have settled to our own standard, so we would rather send you to your lender or the CBUAE rulebook than print a number. What we can price is the registration: in Dubai, 0.25% of the mortgage value plus AED 250 for the title deed, with a service-partner fee of AED 5,000 + VAT for provisional (Oqood) cases against AED 4,000 + VAT for standard ones.
When do service charges and utility bills start?+
At handover, not when the payment plan ends. In Dubai, service charges for jointly owned property are approved by RERA through the Mollak system, and the Land Department’s service charge index lets you look up the approved figure for a community before you buy — do that rather than relying on a brochure. Utility connection deposits fall due at the same moment: Dubai’s are published by DEWA and set out in our utilities guide, while no Abu Dhabi figure is published on any primary page we could reach.
Sources
- · Dubai Land Department — request to register the initial sale (Oqood)
- · Executive Council Resolution No. 30 of 2013 — approving fees of the Land Department
- · Dubai Land Department — property sale registration (trustee and map fees)
- · Dubai Land Department — mortgage registration application
- · Dubai Land Department — sale registration associated with an initial mortgage
- · DARI (ADREC) — off-plan unit sale registration (2%, AED 10,000 late fee)
- · DARI (ADREC) — transferring a registered unit from the initial register to the real estate register
- · Federal Tax Authority — how will real estate be treated? (VAT)
- · Dubai Land Department — service charge index
- · Dubai Law No. 13 of 2008 — Interim Real Property Register
- · Dubai Law No. 8 of 2007 — escrow accounts for real property development
- · Dubai Land Department — frequently asked questions (escrow)
- · UAE Government Portal — leasing a property in the UAE (housing fee)
- · Impala Real Estate — live market pulse (catalogue figures)
This guide is general information, not legal, tax or immigration advice. Rules change — verify current requirements with the relevant authority or a licensed advisor before acting. Last reviewed 8 September 2026.