The deal is done. The money isn’t.
You’ve done the work. The buyer signed. The seller agreed. The price held. You shook hands across the table and sent a message to your manager that this one is closed. Then a week passes. Then another. You are chasing the other agency for what they owe you, or waiting on a manager’s cheque that somehow hasn’t arrived, or watching a rental commission sit in accounting limbo because Ejari hasn’t been lodged yet and nobody is in a rush but you.
This is not one problem. It is three separate problems that happen at three distinct moments in the life of a Dubai deal — and they each have a specific cause, a specific anatomy, and a specific fix. Understanding them as separate stall points is the first step toward never losing sleep over a payout again.
Stall Point One: The split that was never actually agreed
How the deal gets shared before the terms get signed
Most of the commission disputes that end up at RERA’s door — the RDSC processed over 25,000 cases in 2024 — have their roots in a single conversation that was never made formal. Agent A has the listing. Agent B has the buyer. They speak on the phone, one of them says “the usual split,” and the deal moves forward on the assumption that “the usual” means the same thing to both of them.
It does not always mean the same thing. In Dubai, there is no official law dictating the exact split for agent-to-agent commissions. Sale transactions usually settle on a 50/50 split, and rental transactions follow the same convention — but these are starting points, not rules. On an exclusive listing, the listing agent may offer a smaller split, such as 60/40, citing the exclusivity. When the split is negotiated verbally and never written down, each agent carries their own version of the agreement into the transfer room.
The form that is supposed to prevent this is Form I — the agent-to-agent agreement. Form I is designed to protect an agent’s listings and clients. It must be completed when two agents decide to work together, and it ensures a professional relationship is established and gives each agent the right to compensation provided they contribute to the sale or rental of the property. That is the standard. The gap between the standard and the reality is wide. Relying on verbal agreements, not discussing the commission split until late in the process, assuming a 50/50 split without confirmation, and working with agents who refuse to sign Form I are among the most common errors in co-broke deals.
Why the stall happens at this point
The stall at this point is almost always one of two things: either the split was never defined precisely enough for both parties to act on it, or the split was defined verbally and one party is now disputing what was said. Both lead to the same outcome — one agent is holding the full commission cheque and the other agent has no signed document to enforce their claim.
Commission disputes are fact-specific: who introduced whom, what was signed, what was paid. Without Form I, the co-broke agent has no documented, enforceable position. They have a recollection of a phone call. The agency holding the funds has every incentive to delay while the dispute drains the other agent’s energy and timeline.
There is also a structural issue at the agency level that makes this worse. When a deal closes, the total commission goes first to the brokerage. The individual agent then receives their split — a percentage of that commission agreed upon at the start of their employment or partnership arrangement. Splits typically range from 50% to 70% in favour of the agent, depending on seniority, deal volume, and the specific brokerage’s compensation structure. So the co-broke agent is not just waiting on another agent — they are waiting for money to move through two organisations before it reaches them. Every administrative delay at the receiving agency is also a delay for the individual broker at the originating agency.
What prevents this stall
One thing, and it is not complicated: every split should be spelled out in writing to avoid disputes. Form I needs to be signed before the viewing, not after the offer. The precise percentage, the precise trigger event for payment, and which agency issues the cheque to which agency need to be on paper before both agents invest another hour in the deal.
If a commission dispute arises, RERA’s Rental Disputes Settlement Centre handles the case, and having a written agreement is essential to win any dispute. But winning a dispute takes months. The better outcome is never being in a position where you need to win one.
Stall Point Two: The resale transfer and the commission cheque that waits
The mechanics of how a resale commission is held
In a secondary market transaction in Dubai, commission is not paid when an offer is accepted. It is not paid when Form F is signed, even though that is the moment the deal becomes legally binding. Form F captures every material term of the deal: property details, the agreed price, the payment schedule, the transfer timeline, penalty clauses, and the agent’s commission. The commission cheque is usually collected by the agent at the time of signing Form F, but the agent does not cash it immediately. The cheque is held as security. It is only handed over or cashed on the day of the final transfer at the DLD Trustee Office, once the title deed has been successfully transferred.
This means there is a gap — sometimes weeks, sometimes longer — between the moment commission is acknowledged and the moment it can actually be collected. During that gap, the deal can stall.
What causes the delay between Form F and transfer
A straightforward cash transaction typically takes 20 to 30 business days from start to finish. If either party has a mortgage, expect 30 to 45 days. Those timelines assume nothing goes wrong. Things go wrong regularly.
NOC timing trips up more sellers than people expect. Unpaid service charges, a missing document, some leftover requirement from the developer that nobody flagged in time — any of that can stall the transfer for weeks. Add a mortgage into the equation and the timeline stretches further. The agent has no control over any of this. The cheque is sitting with the brokerage, the transfer date slips, and there is nothing to do but wait.
Then there are disputes that emerge between the Form F signing and the transfer. Commission also needs clarity before this point. If two agents are involved, both parties should know who pays what and when. The commission split should never be left to a side conversation. If it was left to a side conversation, the transfer room is where that ambiguity becomes expensive.
The other issue is documentation quality at the Form F stage itself. Unclear handover or payment dates — vague timelines — can result in disputes over delays or penalties. Not specifying who covers DLD fees, broker commissions, or service charges can lead to last-minute arguments. A Form F that records everything precisely is a deal that transfers cleanly. A Form F with gaps is a deal that generates arguments at exactly the wrong moment.
The VAT layer that catches agents off guard
VAT is a separate consideration that catches some buyers — and some agents — unprepared. Agents registered for VAT, which is required once annual earnings exceed the UAE federal threshold, must add 5% VAT to the commission invoice. Where the split involves two brokerages, VAT needs to be properly accounted for on each invoice. An agency that receives the full commission and issues a partial payment to the co-broke agency needs to ensure the VAT treatment is correct on both sides. Errors here create accounting delays that can push an individual agent’s payout back by weeks, through no fault of either agency’s deal team.
What prevents this stall
The commission terms need to be locked precisely in Form F — not approximately, not “2% as discussed,” but the exact dirham amount, the trigger event (transfer, not MOU signing), and which party pays which brokerage. To ensure commission is legally binding, it must be documented in writing. In a sales transaction, this is detailed in Form F, one of the mandatory RERA forms. It outlines the agreement between the buyer and seller and explicitly states the commission percentage to be paid to the broker. Once signed, this fee becomes a legal obligation upon the successful transfer of the property.
The corollary: an agent who hasn’t locked their commission terms into Form F at signing — or who allowed those terms to be vague — has no real leverage in the transfer room if the other side decides to renegotiate. The leverage is the signed document, not the relationship.
Stall Point Three: The rental close and the Ejari gap
Why rental commission feels like the simplest and delays the most
On the surface, a rental deal should pay faster than a sale. There’s no DLD trustee appointment, no title deed, no NOC process. The deal closes at signing, the tenant hands over cheques, and the agent collects their commission at the same time. For rentals, commission is paid at the time of signing the tenancy contract and handing over the rent cheques. Straightforward.
Except when it isn’t.
The first point of friction in rentals is Ejari. All tenancy agreements in Dubai must be registered on the Ejari system to be legally valid. Every rental contract must be registered on Ejari within 30 days of signing. This registration formalises the tenant-landlord relationship and protects both parties. Without valid Ejari, the tenant cannot get DEWA bills in their name or renew their residence visa. The agent who closes the rental and collects commission has an obligation to complete Ejari registration. When that doesn’t happen promptly — because the landlord is slow with a document, because the tenant hasn’t supplied everything needed, because nobody has decided who is actually driving the registration — the commission that was collected sits in a grey zone where the deal is technically closed but administratively incomplete. If anything goes wrong between signing and Ejari completion, the commission is at risk.
Post-dated cheques and what they mean for the agent’s actual cashflow
Rent in Dubai is still commonly paid by post-dated cheque, usually in one to four instalments. The agent collects their commission at signing, but the landlord’s income is spread across the life of those cheques. This matters to agents for one specific reason: if a cheque bounces mid-tenancy and the deal unravels into an RDSC dispute, the agent who collected commission on a deal that later collapsed faces uncomfortable questions — even if they did everything correctly. The agent who documented every step and has Ejari proof of a properly registered contract is in a different position than the agent who has a signed tenancy and nothing else.
There is also a split problem in rentals that mirrors the sales problem. When a property management company lists a unit and a third-party agent brings the tenant, the commission split negotiation has to happen before the tenant signs — not after. The tenant hands the cheques to the landlord or agent at signing, alongside the agency commission, and the contract is registered on Ejari so the tenancy is official. Once those cheques are handed to one party, recovering a split from that party without a prior written agreement is slow, uncertain, and corrosive to the working relationship between the two brokerages.
The Trakheesi angle in rentals
Agents working in Dubai need to be registered through Trakheesi, the RERA system that issues broker registration numbers and office registration numbers. Practising agents must be registered with RERA and hold a broker card with a broker registration number, the BRN. This matters in the rental context because any commission dispute that goes to the RDSC will immediately surface the question of whether both agents involved were properly licensed. Only RERA-licensed brokers can legally earn commission in Dubai. Using an unlicensed individual puts the transaction at risk. An agent who split a rental commission with an unlicensed individual and then ends up in a dispute over that split has severely limited options at the RDSC, because the agreement itself was irregular from the start.
What prevents this stall
Register Ejari immediately and treat it as part of the close, not an administrative afterthought. Agree the split in writing before showing the property. Collect commission via manager’s cheque — the legally recognised instrument — and ensure the tax invoice is issued and retained. Thorough documentation will always strengthen your position.
The off-plan dimension: when commission depends on a developer’s timeline
Off-plan deals have their own version of the stall problem and it deserves a separate mention. The commission structure on off-plan is set by the developer, not negotiated between agents. When the developer pays commission, and on what milestone, varies by project. The agent’s role is to manage the client to a signed Sales Purchase Agreement and then wait. This is different from a resale, where the transfer can be controlled and scheduled.
What makes off-plan genuinely stall-prone from a split perspective is that buyer payments flow into a legally mandated account structure. The Dubai Land Department and RERA require the use of escrow accounts for off-plan property transactions. These accounts ensure that buyer payments are securely held and released only in line with verified construction progress. The developer may only access funds after achieving specific, RERA-approved construction milestones. The commission that the developer pays the broker typically comes from funds outside the regulated escrow account — from the developer’s own operating structure — but the timing of that payment may be tied to milestones that have nothing to do with when the agent closed the deal. When two agents split an off-plan deal, the gap between the deal date and the commission date can be months.
This makes the written split agreement even more critical in off-plan. The deal date, the developer payment date, and the agent-to-agent transfer date are three different events. If the split was agreed verbally in month one and the developer pays in month six, the co-broke agent is relying entirely on memory and goodwill to collect what they are owed.
The shape that eliminates all three stalls
Look at the three stall points in sequence and the pattern becomes clear:
Stall one happens because the split between agents is agreed verbally and not documented before the deal begins.
Stall two happens because the commission terms are vague in Form F, the transfer takes longer than expected, and by the time everyone is in the DLD trustee office, there is ambiguity about who owes what and to whom.
Stall three happens because the rental commission is collected by one party with no prior written commitment to share it, and Ejari registration is treated as optional rather than as part of the professional close.
Every one of these stalls shares a common cause: the split is agreed late, agreed informally, or not made concrete before money starts moving. And every one of them has the same structural fix.
When multiple agents are involved in a single listing, the commission is typically split among them — and clear agreements should be in place from the start. That sentence is easy to agree with and hard to act on in the heat of a live deal. The agent with the buyer is calling. The seller is ready to sign. The listing agent doesn’t want to slow down the momentum with paperwork. So the paperwork waits, and the problem is born.
The professional standard — the one that removes all three stall points — is this: before both agents invest time in a shared deal, the exact split percentage is in writing on Form I. Before Form F is signed, the commission terms are precise: the amount in dirhams, which agency pays which, and the trigger event. Before a rental commission is collected at signing, the split with any co-broke agency is already documented and the Ejari process is already in motion.
And then — critically — both agencies get paid at the same moment. Not sequentially. Not after one brokerage has processed the money and decided how to remit. At the same moment. When commission moves as a single simultaneous event rather than as a cascade from one party to the next, there is nothing to chase, nothing to dispute, and no window in which one party can hold funds while the other waits.
When two brokers collaborate on a deal, the commission structure must be agreed upon in advance. Without a clear agent-to-agent agreement, many agents end up in costly disputes or losing their commission entirely.
The deals that pay cleanly and quickly are not necessarily the simplest deals. They are the deals where the payment structure was designed before the deal was run — where the split was signed, the form was complete, and every party knew exactly what they were owed and when they would receive it. The chaos that follows an undocumented split is not bad luck. It is the entirely predictable consequence of leaving a financial agreement to goodwill.
Dubai’s regulatory framework — Form A, Form B, Form F, Form I, Ejari, the RDSC — provides every tool needed to close without ambiguity. The three stall points described in this article are not gaps in the framework. They are the gaps between what the framework provides and what agents actually use. Closing that gap is the whole game.
