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Glossary

Oqood

Oqood is the Dubai Land Department portal that puts an off-plan sale on the interim real property register. Until it's there the sale is void in law. Registration costs 2% from each side, must happen within 90 days of signing, and the certificate it produces is what you hold until the title deed exists.

What Oqood is

DLD describes the service, "Request to register the initial sale", as one that "allows a real estate developer to register units sold off-plan or land plots whose value has not been fully paid at the provisional register." The register itself comes from Law No. (13) of 2008 Regulating the Interim Real Property Register, and Article 3 is the sentence that matters: "Any disposition that occurs in respect of any Real Property Unit sold off-plan will be entered in the Interim Property Register, and any sale or any other legal disposition that transfers or restricts ownership or any ancillary rights will be void unless entered in that Register."

Article 10 adds the earlier gate: no developer or broker "may enter into a private sale contract to dispose of Real Property or Real Property Units by way of Off-plan Sale in projects which are not approved by the Competent Entities. Any contract which is entered into prior to obtaining such approval will be null and void." An unapproved project, or an unregistered contract, is not a purchase. DLD uses "Oqood" only as the system's name and never translates it; that it is the Arabic plural of "contract" is a broker's gloss, not DLD's.

Registering: who, when, what it costs

The developer files it, through what DLD calls the "Real Estate Developers Portal - Oqood", and the contract "shall be registered in the provisional register within 90 days from the date of signing the contract". It must be signed by developer and purchaser; a minor's guardian signs for a minor. An individual buyer supplies "a copy of the sale and purchase contract", "a copy of a valid UAE ID" and, for non-residents, a passport copy.

Service time "Business day". Issued document: "Provisional registration e-certificate". In practice most developers pass the seller's 2% to the buyer in the contract, which is why buyers speak of "the 4%"; the law splits it.

What the certificate shows, field by field, is not published by DLD. Unit, area, price, payment plan and the parties are what secondary guides describe, and what buyers report seeing; we can't quote a DLD sample.

From Oqood to title deed

At handover the provisional entry becomes a full one. DLD's service "Request to complete the initial procedures data" "allows parties who are compliant with their contractual obligations to issue a Certificate of Title / Title deed." Because the registration fee "has been previously collected", the conversion is a flat charge: "title deed fee: AED 250", a map fee of AED 250 for a unit or villa (AED 225 or AED 100 for land plots depending on jurisdiction), and the two AED 10 dirhams. Service time six business days. The 4% is paid once, at Oqood; there is no second percentage at handover.

Selling before handover

An off-plan unit can change hands before the deed exists, and DLD has a service for the developer to record it. The "Settlements Application" "allows a developer to approve implementation of the amicable settlement agreement between a developer and an investor ... through which deregistration, merger, or transfer a real estate unit or land to another to be made." DLD's fee is AED 3,000 plus the two AED 10 dirhams, service time seven and a half hours. The developer's own no-objection fee for the assignment is separate, set by the developer, and not a DLD number.

If you stop paying

This is the article buyers should read before they sign, and it has been rewritten twice. The current text is Article 11 as replaced by Law No. (19) of 2020. After a formal notice and a period to cure, and "based on the percentage of completion of the Real Property project, the Developer may take any of the following measures against the purchaser without recourse to courts or arbitration":

Excess over the retained percentage is refunded within a year of termination or 60 days of resale, whichever is earlier. The 2017 version had a fourth band letting a developer who had not started work keep 30%; the 2020 amendment removed it, and much online commentary still quotes it.

DLD's operational service for this, "Request for termination of initial registration", costs the developer AED 600 and requires that the buyer "must have received or refused to receive the developer's warning within a period of not less than a month".

If the developer fails

Article 11(b), current text: where the developer "has not commenced work on the Real Property project for any reason beyond his control ... or where the Real Property 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." That law is the escrow law; its Article 15 obliges the escrow bank, in "any emergency situation where the Real Estate Development project is not completed", to "ensure that the Real Estate Development project is completed, or depositors are refunded their payments". The refund route runs through the escrow account, which is why checking that account before you pay is the single most useful thing an off-plan buyer does.

Checking your registration

DLD's Dubai REST app exists partly for this: to let "all the beneficiaries of the off-plan projects ... 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". Your registered unit appears under your own properties once the developer has filed it. There is no separate "verify Oqood" tool; DLD's title-deed verifier takes a title deed number and is for after handover.

Where this comes up

Escrow account · Buying off-plan · Title deed

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.