Home / Glossary / Escrow account

Glossary

Escrow account

In Dubai an escrow account is the bank account that holds every dirham a buyer pays for an off-plan unit, opened by the developer under Law No. 8 of 2007 at a bank the Land Department accredits. You never open one yourself. You check that the developer has, and that your money is going into it.

Who opens it, and why you never do

People search for "how to open an escrow account in Dubai" because the word means something different abroad. Here it is a developer's obligation. Law No. (8) of 2007 Concerning Escrow Accounts for Real Estate Development, Article 6: "Any Developer who wishes to sell Units off-plan must submit to the Department a request to open an Escrow Account." Article 9: "In the event of multiple projects implemented by the Developer, each project must have a separate Escrow Account." The bank holding it is the "Escrow Agent", defined in Article 2 as "the financial or banking institution accredited by the Department to manage an Escrow Account".

Article 7 says what goes in: "the payments made by off-plan purchasers, or by the financers of the project are deposited in an account opened with the Escrow Agent in the name of the Real Estate Development project." DLD's own FAQ closes the loophole of money taken before the account existed: "all payments received from buyers must be paid into the Escrow account." The Land Department currently accredits 30 banks as escrow agents, listed on its site, and the test for a bank is being "licensed by the Central Bank of the UAE to receive third-party deposits ... provided that these entities are approved by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency".

The developer pays to set this up. DLD's Register Project service, which "enables real estate development companies to register a real estate project and open an escrow account for off-plan sales", carries a registration fee of AED 150,000 plus the knowledge and innovation dirhams, and runs through the same Oqood developer portal that later registers your contract.

What happens to your money while the tower goes up

Two protections are written into the law. Article 9(1): "No attachment may be imposed on the payments deposited in this account for the benefit of the creditors of the Developer." If the developer's other business fails, your project's account is not in the wreckage. Article 11 puts the bank under DLD's eye: the escrow agent "must provide the Department with regular statements of the revenue and expenditure of his Escrow Accounts", and DLD "may, at any time, request any Escrow Agent to provide any information or data it requires".

What the law text does not spell out is the milestone mechanism most explainers describe, with a consultant certifying progress before each release. That is how DLD operates the accounts, and DLD's FAQ adds one hard number: "only 5% of total sales can be paid for project marketing purposes" from the account. The release-against-progress mechanics are DLD practice, not a quoted article, so we describe them as practice.

When the project completes

Article 14: "An Escrow Agent must retain five percent (5%) of the total value of each Escrow Account once the Developer obtains the completion certificate. The retained amount will be released to the Developer one (1) year from the registration of Units in the name of purchasers." Note the trigger. The year runs from the registration of units in buyers' names, the point your Oqood becomes a title deed, not from the completion certificate. The retention is the developer's incentive to fix defects in that first year.

When it doesn't

Article 15: "In the event of any emergency situation where the Real Estate Development project is not completed, the Escrow Agent of that project must, after consultation with the Department, take the required measures to preserve the rights of depositors, and ensure that the Real Estate Development project is completed, or depositors are refunded their payments." The interim-register law points back to the same place. Article 11(b) of Law No. 13 of 2008, as amended in 2020: where the project "is cancelled pursuant to a final reasoned decision of RERA, the Developer must refund all payments made by the purchasers, in accordance with the procedures and rules stipulated in the above-mentioned Law No. (8) of 2007."

And the criminal edge, Article 16: "a jail sentence and a fine of at least one hundred thousand Dirhams (AED 100,000.00), or either penalty, will be imposed on any person who ... steals, appropriates, or forfeits any amounts of money delivered to him for the purpose of implementing Real Estate Development projects."

How to check a project's escrow account

DLD publishes it. The Dubai REST app's stated purpose includes enabling "all the beneficiaries of the off-plan projects to obtain real-time information about the projects such as: The percentage of completion, the actual pictures of the project, the escrow account number, payments due on the owners in the projects that they invested in".

1. Open Dubai REST and choose Project Status (DLD also calls it Mashrooi) from the home screen or services menu.
2. Search by project name or number.
3. Open the Escrow Account tab. It shows the bank name and the account.
4. Compare that account to the one on the developer's payment instructions. If they differ, don't pay until they match.

The same screen shows the completion percentage, which matters twice over: it's the number that governs what the developer may keep if you stop paying under the interim-register law, and it's the number the bank releases funds against.

What changed in September 2026

On 3 September 2026 DLD launched an "Initial Registration" platform "to streamline the developer journey and integrate project registration, real estate transaction registration and escrow account management", with a "Project 360" view "covering unit status, escrow accounts, financial data and project records, alongside early warning indicators". DLD's own release says the aim is "reducing discrepancies between sales, escrow account and ownership records while improving monitoring and oversight". For a buyer the practical change is that the escrow record, the sales record and the ownership record are now reconciled in one system, which is where mismatches used to hide.

Where this comes up

Oqood · Buying off-plan · Mollak

Frequently Asked Questions

This entry is part of the Home Guide Dubai glossary - the vocabulary a Dubai buyer or Golden Visa applicant actually meets, defined in plain English and kept consistent with our verified guides.