Dubai Property Purchase Fees

We rate this tip S tier: the famous 4% is less than two thirds of what a cash buyer hands over on transfer day, and the line that moves is the broker's. George Vanous's notes list every manager's check for an apartment he bought for AED 4,000,000: AED 4,255,080 in all (about $1,158,600), which is 6.4% over the price. The Dubai Land Department still charges 4% of the sale value (listed as 2% from each side), and the trustee office still takes AED 4,000 plus VAT. His broker took AED 86,000 before VAT, which is 2.15% of the price, not the 2% his own fee list expected: AED 6,300 more with the VAT.

We think the Land Department's Property Sale Registration page will still show 2% from the seller, 2% from the buyer and a trustee fee of AED 4,000 plus VAT for sales of AED 500,000 or more when we next read it. Dubai has held the 4% through a falling market and a rising one. Confidence: Likely. Check by: Mar 2027.

Every check he wrote

His notes head the list "Real example (in AED)". The transfer is not dated in them; the fee list beside it comes from meetings in Oct 2019, and an entry of Feb 5, 2020 already treats the apartment as his.

He calls the last line a "government fee every buyer pays", and sums up: "4,255,080 total (6.4% more than purchase price)". Everything except the trustee cash went by manager's check, and his notes carry an instruction from the sale's paperwork that catches people out: "Copies of all the Managers Cheques must be provided 48 hours prior to transfer to your Sales Progression Officer in order to book the transfer appointment." So the money has to sit in the account, and the checks have to be issued, at least two days before the appointment.

The same purchase on today's fee list

Read on Nov 10, 2026, the Land Department's page gives these fees for registering a sale:

The page does not say which of the small fixed fees apply to one apartment, so we cannot rebuild his AED 580 from it: the lines add up to AED 520 without the map and AED 745 with it. Either way the fixed fees are a rounding error next to the 4%.

The department lists the 4% as split between the two sides. George paid all of it, and that is how The National describes the market: its Jan 25, 2025 report on upfront costs counts the full 4% among the buyer's costs. Who pays is whatever the sale contract says, so read that clause before signing.

At today's list, with a broker at exactly 2% plus VAT, the same AED 4,000,000 cash purchase comes to about AED 4,248,700 to AED 4,248,950. Nothing here has moved since his purchase except the small fixed fees.

The broker's line is the one to check

His own fee list says "Real estate broker fees ... Fee: 2% of purchase price". The check was for AED 86,000, which is 2.15%. The notes do not explain the difference. On AED 4,000,000 it is AED 6,000, and AED 6,300 once the 5% VAT is added. UAE VAT has been 5% since Jan 1, 2018, and it applies to the broker's fee and the trustee's fee, not to the price of a resale home or to the 4%.

We found no government page that sets a broker's commission for a sale: 2% is custom, reported as such by The National and by Khaleej Times. A custom can be negotiated, and a figure agreed in writing before the offer is the only one that holds.

His second purchase came out the same

The notes give totals only for a second apartment: AED 3,150,000 price, AED 3,353,230 "after all fees". That is 6.45% over the price. Take off the 4%, the AED 580 and the AED 4,200, and AED 72,450 is left, which is exactly AED 69,000 plus 5% VAT. If that was the broker (our working, not his), the commission was 2.19%.

What a mortgage adds

George paid cash. His notes list what a loan would have added, as quoted to him in Oct 2019, and the Land Department's mortgage registration page confirms the government part today:

• Mortgage registration: 0.25% of the loan (his note says the same), plus AED 250 for the title deed, AED 10 knowledge fee, AED 10 innovation fee and a service partner fee of AED 4,000 plus VAT.
• Bank processing fee: "0.5% of mortgage loan (standard for all banks)" in his notes. This is the bank's own charge and varies.
• Valuation: "2,500 - 3,150" in his notes.
• Mortgage broker: a conveyancing fee of AED 6,000 and a services fee of AED 5,000, as quoted to him.

His notes also record the down payment rule of the time: "35% downpayment for 5+ million mortgages, 25% downpayment for <5 million mortgages". That matched the Central Bank's limits in 2019. The Regulations Regarding Mortgage Loans, as consolidated on Apr 8, 2020, now let a bank lend an expatriate up to 80% of the value of a first home worth less than AED 5 million and 70% above that, so the minimums are 20% and 30%. A second home or an investment property is capped at 60%, and off-plan at 50%.

One change since his purchase makes the 6.4% matter more. The National reported on Jan 25, 2025 that the Central Bank had told banks to stop lending the Land Department fee and the broker's commission from Feb 1, 2025, so a mortgage buyer now needs the down payment and the fees in cash. The report rests on bankers and brokers; we did not find the instruction on the Central Bank's site. What banks asked of him as a borrower is its own story, told on Dubai Mortgage for the Self-Employed.

The order things happen in

The steps, as a banker laid them out for him on Oct 13, 2019:

1. Make an offer.
2. The seller accepts and both sides sign the memorandum of understanding (MOU).
3. A buyer with a loan gives the MOU to the lending bank.
4. Everybody meets at the Land Department's trustee office to sign and hand over the checks. The department's page puts the registration itself at 20 minutes.
5. The checks are released when everything is in order.
6. With a loan, the bank stays on the title as mortgagee until it is paid in full, then the owner goes back to have it removed.

On the MOU he was told that the buyer puts down a manager's check for 10% of the price, and that a side backing out without a valid reason loses that 10%, which "goes 40% to broker and 60% to remaining party". We could not confirm that split on any Land Department page. It is one banker's account of practice in 2019, and the contract the two sides actually sign decides what happens to the deposit.

One more document belongs between steps 2 and 4: the Land Department requires a no-objection certificate from the developer in freehold areas, and a title blocked over unpaid service fees cannot be sold at all, the trap set out on Dubai Property Block for Unpaid Service Fees.

Fees as a tax on the gain

Dubai has no capital gains tax, and George's notes turn the fees into one. Writing to a friend, he put it in dollars: buy for $1,000,000 and pay "about $70,000 in fees"; later sell for $2,000,000 and pay about 2%, $40,000; the $1,000,000 gain nets $890,000, "creating a "tax" of $110,000 or 11% from fees".

The sum is right, and it flatters the fees, because they are charged on the price and not on the gain. At his own measured 6.4%, with a 2% commission plus VAT on the sale:

A home has to rise about 8.7% before its owner is back to zero. Adding a relative to the deed is the one transfer that escapes the 4%, at the rate set out on Gifting a Dubai Property Share.

Where to see what homes really sold for

Asking prices are not sale prices. His notes name two places to see the registered ones:

• The Land Department itself. He used the Dubai REST app ("Services | Real Estate Transactions") and noted that Feb 9, 2023 "had 503 sales worth AED 1.69B". On the web, the department's Real Estate Data page searches transactions by date, area and property type and downloads the result as a file.
• DXBinteract, a private site that, in his words, "shows actual real estate sales data in Dubai". He noted that a free account was needed to see the sales. On Nov 10, 2026 its front page showed median prices and transaction counts by area without signing in.

What we read on Nov 10, 2026

The Land Department's sale and mortgage registration pages gave the 4% (as 2% and 2%), the fixed fees, both trustee bands and the 0.25%. The Central Bank's rulebook gave the loan limits. The Ministry of Finance's page gave the VAT rate. We did not find an official source for the 2% broker commission, for the 10% deposit and its split, or for the 48-hour rule on check copies, and the page presents each as what George was told or charged. We did not see his transfer documents: every amount in the first table is from his notes.

Sources

• Property Sale Registration, Dubai Land Department, read Nov 10, 2026
• Mortgage registration application, Dubai Land Department, read Nov 10, 2026
• Real Estate Data, Dubai Land Department, read Nov 10, 2026
• Regulations Regarding Mortgage Loans, Central Bank of the UAE, consolidated Apr 8, 2020, read Nov 10, 2026
• Value Added Tax (VAT), UAE Ministry of Finance, read Nov 10, 2026
• UAE buyers to pay higher upfront property costs as Central Bank issues new orders, The National, Jan 25, 2025
• UAE: Property buyers to pay higher upfront as banks stop financing DLD, brokerage fees, Khaleej Times, Jan 26, 2025
• DXBinteract, DXBinteract, read Nov 10, 2026
• George Vanous's notes, Oct 2019 to Feb 9, 2023