The Card Is on the Table — Now What?
Picture the moment a listing-side agent and a buying-side agent agree, over WhatsApp, that they will co-broke a secondary market apartment in Business Bay. The client is serious, the deal is moving, and both agents are focused on the buyer — as they should be. Nobody has written down the split. Nobody has signed anything between the two agencies. The Form F goes through, the buyer’s cheque is handed over at the trustee office, the commission lands in the listing agency’s account, and — suddenly — the conversation about paying the other side turns uncomfortable.
This scenario plays out constantly in Dubai. It is not caused by bad faith on anyone’s part, at least not usually. It is caused by a misunderstanding of what a RERA broker card actually authorises you to do and, just as importantly, what it does not guarantee you. The card makes you legal. It does not make you paid.
Two Levels, Both Required
Dubai regulates real estate brokerage on two levels, and it helps enormously to keep them separate in your mind. The first level is the company: the brokerage firm holds a trade licence and a registration with RERA, the arm of the DLD that supervises the sector. The second level is the individual: the person who actually shows the property, negotiates on the buyer’s behalf, and puts a contract in front of them must personally hold a real estate activity practice card — what the market universally calls the RERA broker card. Both levels have to be in place.
A licensed firm does not make an unlicensed individual legitimate, and a carded individual working outside a licensed firm is equally a problem. This matters because every right the card confers flows through the agency the individual is registered under. The card is not a freelance licence. There are no real estate agents working freelance in Dubai — you need to be affiliated with a licensed broker to legally operate in the country.
The DLD distinguishes between a real estate broker and a real estate agent. An agent operates under the supervision of a licensed brokerage and cannot conduct transactions independently. A broker holds a senior designation and, subject to meeting additional regulatory and commercial requirements, may establish and operate an independent brokerage. Both designations require the RERA card, but the scope of what each can do differs. Know which one you are.
What the Card Actually Permits
The broker card confirms regulatory compliance and grants the holder the legal right to practise real estate brokerage within the Emirate of Dubai. In practice, that breaks down into a set of specific, concrete permissions:
Conducting transactions. The RERA broker card issued by the DLD permits the holder to engage in sales and leasing transactions within the Emirate of Dubai, subject to the scope of their brokerage affiliation. Sales and leasing — that is the scope. Property management, valuations, and other services carry separate designations.
Advertising property. Every property advertisement in Dubai — whether online, in print, or on a billboard — is required to carry a Trakheesi permit number: a marketing authorisation issued by the DLD through its Trakheesi system and supervised by RERA. The broker card is the prerequisite for obtaining those permits. Without a current card, there is no permit. Without a permit, there is no legitimate listing. The penalty for advertising without a Trakheesi permit is AED 50,000 for the first offence.
Using your BRN on listings. Every legitimate broker in Dubai carries a Broker Registration Number, or BRN, on an active RERA broker card. This BRN must be displayed on all real estate listings and documents. It is the identifier that ties every listing you publish, every form you sign, and every deal you close back to you as an individually licensed professional.
Signing RERA-standard agreements. The card is what authorises you to execute Form A (the listing agreement with the seller), Form B (the buyer representation agreement), Form F (the MOU/sale contract), and Form I (the inter-agency co-operation agreement). Every property sale, rental, or sub-agency agreement in Dubai must be backed by an official RERA form — a document that defines responsibilities, commissions, and legal obligations for all parties involved.
Operating only within Dubai. The RERA broker licence is issued by the Dubai Land Department and is valid only within the Emirate of Dubai. Real estate activities in other Emirates require separate licensing from the relevant local authority. An agent with a Dubai RERA card cannot legally act as a broker in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, or Ras Al Khaimah. A surprisingly large number of Dubai-based agents forget this when a client points to property in another emirate.
What the Card Does Not Do
This is where the practical gap opens between what agents assume and what the card actually delivers.
The card does not give you the right to earn commission from a deal. It gives you the right to participate in a deal. Commission is earned through the contractual agreements you sign — Form A, Form B — and it is paid because those agreements specify it clearly and both parties honour them. The card is the entry ticket; the forms are the payment mechanism.
The card does not bind another agency to a split. When two licensed agents co-broke a deal, each one holds a card, each card is valid, and neither card tells the other agency how much of the commission belongs to each side. That is a commercial agreement, separate from the regulatory licence, and it must be documented separately — ideally through Form I before the deal progresses.
The card does not protect your right to advertise someone else’s listing. For a resale, the broker normally needs a signed Form A — the marketing agreement between the seller and the brokerage. The card permits advertising; Form A authorises advertising that specific property. Without it, your Trakheesi permit application will not succeed because the permit links to a specific property, a specific broker, and a valid listing agreement.
The card does not override exclusivity. In Dubai, it depends on the appointment: a seller can appoint a brokerage exclusively or more than one on a non-exclusive basis, subject to RERA rules. If another agency holds an exclusive Form A, your card gives you no right to market that property regardless of your relationship with the buyer.
The Paper Trail Behind a Deal
Once the card is in your pocket and the listing is yours to work, a Dubai deal produces a specific sequence of documents. Understanding where each one sits tells you exactly when your rights crystallise — and when they do not.
Your broker should carry an active BRN, backed by a signed Form A or Form B agreement.
Form A is your authority to market. Form A is the formal agreement between a property owner (seller) and a real estate brokerage. It is the first step in any legal secondary market transaction. It locks in the commission the seller has agreed to pay, the marketing scope, and — critically — whether the listing is exclusive.
Form B is the buyer’s commitment to you. Form B is the Buyer–Broker Agreement that formalises the relationship between a buyer and their real estate agent and explains the search, representation, and commission terms. Without it, the buyer is under no obligation to deal with you exclusively, and you may find that the commission you expected disappears if they walk into another agency’s office and close through a different broker.
Form I is the inter-agency instrument, and it is the most under-used form in the Dubai market. Form I is an agreement between two agents who act on behalf of the buyer and the seller. The form protects the agent’s rights, listings, and clients. It also ensures a professional relationship between two or more agents. In Dubai’s co-operative brokerage ecosystem, multiple agencies often work together. Form I confirms which agent introduced the buyer and how commissions will be shared. When Form I is signed before the deal reaches Form F, the split is not a conversation — it is a contract.
Form F is the MOU — the moment the deal becomes binding. Form F is the Sales and Purchase Agreement (MOU), the legally binding contract that confirms the final agreed terms between buyer and seller. Agent commission — typically 2% of the sale price — becomes legally due upon Form F signing. Once the client has signed, the commission obligation to the agency is live. The question is: which agency, and in what proportion? If Form I was not signed before this moment, the answer is whatever the listing agency decides to pay — which may not match what was agreed over WhatsApp.
Where Splits Go Wrong
The structural problem in Dubai’s shared-deal market is not dishonesty; it is sequencing. The conversation about the split happens at the beginning, informally. The documentation of the split — if it happens at all — is left to the end, when one party already holds the money.
Consider the mechanics of a typical secondary market sale. On a resale or secondary-market purchase, the buyer conventionally pays 2% of the agreed sale price plus 5% VAT. On a co-broke deal, that 2% (plus VAT) lands in the listing agency’s account, because the buyer’s cheque is addressed to the brokerage on the Form F. The buying-side agent’s agency has no direct contractual claim against the client — their claim is against the listing agency, and the strength of that claim depends entirely on what was documented between the two agencies.
If the only record is a WhatsApp message, you are not in a strong legal position. The message might prove that a conversation happened; it is unlikely to prove the exact terms with the precision needed to enforce payment. Attempting to manage these variables through informal channels creates the conditions for chronic errors: wrong split percentages applied to the wrong deal type, and disbursements delayed because no one can confirm which version of the commission agreement is the authoritative one.
The situation is more acute with off-plan. When a buying-side agent brings a client to a developer’s project, the developer’s sales team processes the booking, the developer pays the co-broke commission, and the timeline can stretch weeks or months past the booking date. If the agency-to-agency split was not agreed in writing before the booking was registered, enforcing it after the fact is an exercise in patience that most agents cannot afford.
The Off-Plan Dimension
Off-plan operates under a different payment architecture from secondary sales, and agents who work across both sectors need to understand where those differences create commission risk.
When a client buys an off-plan unit, their payments go into a RERA-regulated escrow account — not to the developer’s operating account. Under Dubai’s escrow law, a developer selling off-plan units must register the project with RERA and hold buyer payments in a project-specific escrow account, released against verified construction milestones rather than paid directly to the developer. As per Law 8/2007, off-plan property payments must be made through RERA-approved escrow accounts, having withdrawals linked to the stage of construction. This protects the buyer; it does not protect the agent. The agent’s commission in an off-plan deal is a separate commercial arrangement between the agency and the developer, and it is paid on the developer’s own schedule, from the developer’s own funds — not from the escrow account.
What this means in practice: a buying-side agent who has a verbal agreement with a developer’s sales team for a co-broke percentage has no escrow protection, no DLD registration backing that promise, and limited recourse if the developer delays or disputes the amount. The agent’s only protection is the written co-broke agreement signed before the booking is made.
Ejari, Rentals, and the Commission Question
In the rental market the card gives the agent the right to register tenancy contracts through Ejari — the system under which all residential leases in Dubai must be registered. Rental contract registration through Ejari falls under RERA’s rental system; rent increase disputes, eviction cases, and deposit disputes fall under the Rental Disputes Centre, a judicial body attached to the DLD.
The 5% rental commission is not written into Dubai’s tenancy law; it is the figure RERA recognises as customary and the one referenced when a commission dispute reaches the Rental Disputes Centre. Customary means it can be negotiated downward on higher-rent units, which is standard. It also means that an agent who never puts their commission agreement in writing before completing a rental — relying instead on the convention — may find themselves in a dispute with no enforceable document.
Rental splits between two agencies on a lease deal carry the same risk as on a sale: the landlord’s agent holds the commission paid by the tenant, and the tenant’s agent’s claim against that commission is only as strong as whatever the two agencies agreed in writing before the lease was signed. Ejari registration does not record the inter-agency split. It records the tenancy. These are different things.
Annual Renewal and the Validity Trap
A point that is relevant and often overlooked: the card’s validity is not entirely self-contained. Two details catch agencies out. Card validity is tied to the validity of the trade licence, so a licence renewal that slips drags every broker card with it. An agent whose card shows a valid date may discover that their agency’s trade licence expired last month, which means every Trakheesi permit the agency has applied for since that date is potentially invalid, and every listing is at risk.
Failure to renew the licence before the expiry date may result in fines imposed by the DLD. In certain cases, late renewal may require the applicant to repeat the DREI training programme and pass the RERA examination again. For active agents, losing even a few weeks of card validity in the middle of a busy pipeline is a material commercial problem, not just an administrative inconvenience.
Renewal requires Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training and payment of renewal fees. The card is a recurring obligation, not a one-time credential. Treating it as set-and-forget is the kind of administrative oversight that leads to a listing being pulled off a portal in the middle of negotiations.
VAT on Commission: The Line That Causes Confusion
Commission in Dubai is subject to VAT at 5%, and this generates genuine confusion in co-broke situations when both sides are not clear on who is accounting for what. Do not assume residential rental commission is automatically VAT exempt. The residential lease itself may have a different VAT treatment, but the broker’s agency fee is a separate service. If the brokerage is VAT-registered and the service is taxable in the UAE, 5% VAT may be charged on the commission.
In a split deal, the VAT on the full commission is typically the listing agency’s liability to account for, because they are the ones invoicing the client. The buying-side agency receives a net payment from the listing agency — a commercial payment between two businesses. Whether that internal payment also carries VAT depends on the VAT registration status of both agencies and the nature of the transaction between them. This is not an area to sort out after the deal closes. It is an area to confirm in writing before the Form F is signed, when the split agreement is documented.
The Mechanics of a Dispute
Commission disputes between agencies in Dubai typically follow a recognisable pattern. The deal closes, the money lands in one place, and the agency that expected to receive its share sends a message that goes unanswered or is met with a revised figure. By that point, the options are limited: an informal negotiation, a formal RERA complaint, or civil court proceedings — each of which consumes time and money that eats directly into the commission being chased.
Brokerages routinely handle developer co-broking agreements, RERA-regulated commission caps, performance-tiered split structures, project-specific bonus schemes, and multi-agent team deals — all simultaneously. The more complex the deal, the more points of failure exist in an informally agreed split. Each undocumented handshake is a future dispute waiting for the right set of circumstances.
The agent’s instinct is often to keep the deal moving and sort the paperwork later. This is understandable — a hesitation on the split conversation can feel like a threat to a deal that both sides want to close. But the instinct is wrong. The split conversation is a small friction early. A split dispute is a large friction late, after the client has gone, after the commission is sitting in another agency’s account, and after the legal costs start to accumulate.
What the Card Tells You — and What Only the Agreement Can Settle
The RERA broker card is a credential that establishes regulatory standing. It tells the market that you have trained, passed an exam, and are registered to practice real estate in Dubai under a licensed brokerage. It tells DLD that your listings can carry permit numbers and your name can appear on Form F. It tells your clients that they are dealing with someone who is subject to RERA’s oversight and complaints process.
It does not tell another agency how much they owe you. It does not tell a developer when to release your commission. It does not protect a split that was never put in writing. The card confers the right to participate; everything about how you get paid flows from the agreements you sign — and specifically from whether you sign them before the client’s money moves, or after.
The practical principle that removes the friction is not complicated: the split is agreed, documented, and signed before the Form F goes through. Every party to the transaction — the agencies, their respective clients, and where relevant the developer — has a written record of who is paid what, and that payment happens simultaneously with the deal closing, not as a follow-up conversation. When the commission is distributed at the same moment the transaction completes, the window for disputes does not just narrow. It closes.
That outcome is available on every deal. It requires agreement up front, documentation in a form that is enforceable, and the discipline to treat the inter-agency conversation as part of the deal, not an afterthought to it. The card gets you to the table. The signed agreement is what gets you paid.
