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Glossary

Title deed

A Dubai title deed is the e-Certificate of Title the Land Department issues from its register, and under Law No. 7 of 2006 it has absolute evidentiary value. It is electronic only, it costs AED 250 to issue, and anyone can check one against DLD in seconds.

What the deed is in law

Law No. (7) of 2006 Concerning Real Property Registration builds the deed in three articles. Article 7 creates the register: "A Property Register will be maintained in the Department to record all Real Property Rights and any amendments thereto. This Property Register will have absolute evidentiary value against all parties and the validity of its data may not be impugned unless it is proven to be the result of fraud or forgery." Article 22 issues the document: "The Department will issue title deeds relating to Real Property Rights based on the data recorded in the Property Register." Article 24 gives it force: "Title deeds mentioned in Article (22) of this Law will have absolute evidentiary value in verifying Real Property Rights."

Two more articles matter to an apartment buyer. Article 8: "all electronically recorded Real Property documents and reports will have the same evidentiary value as the originals". And Article 23: "apartment buildings and multi-storey buildings will be treated as a single Real Property Unit and will have one record in the Property Register to be supplemented by records stating the names of the owners of the apartments, floors, and common areas." Your unit's deed is a supplementary record on the building's entry, which is why the building and plot numbers appear on it.

What it shows

DLD's own guide to the electronic deed reproduces a sample. The fields on it: issue date; mortgage status; property type; community; municipality number; building number and name; floor; property (unit) number; suite area, balcony area and common area; total area in square metres; ownership percentage; purchase price; whether the property is freehold; and property status. The sample carries a QR code and a footer stating that the certificate's data is stored on blockchain and that it is issued electronically with no signature or stamp required; that footer is read from the image rather than copied from text, so we quote its sense, not its words.

Two of those fields answer questions buyers ask elsewhere. The freehold flag tells you whether the unit sits in a designated area. The ownership percentage is what a co-owner's visa share is tested against.

Electronic only, and how to get yours

Every DLD service that produces a deed lists "Electronic Title Deed" as the issued document and nothing else; no service page offers paper. DLD's guide gives the download: "1. Open Dubai REST App 2. Login to the app and select a specific property 3. Click on the Menu (3 dots located on bottom right) which will open all Property Services 4. Select 'Electronic Title Deed' 5. Result will be displayed on the screen." A lost deed is therefore not lost; you download it again. DLD does not publish a separate lost-deed service, and the reissue route is the ordinary "Issue Title Deed" service below.

What it costs

AED 20 is the knowledge and innovation dirhams. Fees from the DLD e-service pages named in the sources, read 26 September 2026.

How to verify one

DLD's "Verify Title Deed" service takes four inputs: title deed number, title deed year, property type (land, unit or villa) and owner. A genuine deed returns the message "This certificate has been digitally validated by blockchain." The QR code printed on the deed appears to lead to the same check; DLD shows the code on its sample but does not describe the mechanism in words, so we call that inferred.

For a fuller picture than the deed itself, DLD's "Request Detailed Property Report" issues "a detailed property statement (for a single property only), which includes information on the owner, the property, mortgage, seizure, suspension, and project details" for AED 50 plus the AED 20, in ten minutes. That is the closest DLD product to the "property status statement certificate" GDRFA asks for on a Golden Visa file; DLD does not use GDRFA's phrase, so match them by content, not by name.

Co-owners and the visa share

The ownership percentage on the deed drives two rules. For the two-year Taskeen visa, DLD's page: "A co-owner of the property is allowed to apply for the issuance of a license and residency visa, provided that their share value is not less than AED 400,000." For the ten-year Golden Visa, the partner service centre that processes files states: "Title deed jointly between partner is acceptable (applicant share should be minimum 2 million)", and for spouses whose joint property is under AED 4 million, one applies and sponsors the other. Our co-owned property page works the examples.

Tokenised deeds, 2025

On 19 March 2025 DLD "launched the pilot phase of the 'Real Estate Tokenisation Project'", describing itself as "the first real estate registration entity in the Middle East to implement tokenisation on property title deeds". On 29 May 2025 it issued "the world's first Property Token Ownership Certificate" after a sale on a VARA-licensed platform that "attracted 224 investors, 70% of whom entered Dubai's real estate market for the first time", at an average of AED 10,714 each. A token certificate is a fractional record on the same register; it is not the deed a whole-unit buyer receives.

Where this comes up

Oqood · Co-owned property · The Golden Visa property route · Freehold areas

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.