The moment the room goes quiet
Picture a developer launch — a ballroom in a Downtown hotel, forty agencies in attendance, a floor plan projected behind a podium. The developer’s sales director announces the project is now live. Phones start ringing. WhatsApp groups detonate. Every agent in that room has a buyer they’ve been warming for three months, and at least one of those buyers is the same person being called by an agent from the agency seated three tables over.
That is the exact moment when a commission dispute is born. Not when the deal goes wrong. Not when the client complains. The dispute is born the second two agents start working the same buyer toward the same unit without having agreed, in writing, what each of them is owed.
Off-plan launches compress timelines. Bookings happen within hours of a project going live. A reservation deposit is paid, an SPA is in draft, Oqood registration is on the calendar — and somewhere in that rush, the two agents who both claim credit for bringing the buyer have never signed a thing between themselves. By the time the developer releases commission, weeks or months later, neither agent can prove what was agreed. One of them is going to lose money they legitimately earned.
This article is about fixing that — before the launch, not after.
Why off-plan commission is structurally different
In a resale transaction, the commission mechanics are cleaner for agents to think about. When two agents are involved in a transaction — a listing agent representing the seller and a buyer’s agent representing the buyer — the commission needs to be split between them, and how that split works determines a lot about how each agent behaves during the deal. In a resale, both sides are usually paying their own agent. The money flow is more visible.
Off-plan is different in a foundational way. Buyers do not pay commission on off-plan properties in Dubai, as developers usually pay the brokerage directly to market and sell the project. For off-plan properties, the commission may vary depending on the project, developer, and brokerage agreement, with the range typically between 2% to 8%. That commission comes out of the developer’s margin, not from an instruction to the buyer’s agent, which means the entire payment chain flows through the developer — and the developer, quite reasonably, has no interest in being the referee for an agent-to-agent dispute they were never party to.
The practical consequence is this: the developer will pay whoever they have on record as the selling agent. If two agencies claim the same buyer, and only one has paperwork, the one with paperwork gets paid. The other has to chase their supposed split from the receiving agency — without a signed agreement, without leverage, and increasingly without goodwill, because the deal is already closed and everyone has moved on.
Fees are by agreement and must be documented in the developer–broker marketing/allocation agreement and Form A. In practice, off-plan commissions often fall in the 2–8% range, but agents should always quote the contracted figure — never a rule of thumb.
The legal framework agents already have — and underuse
RERA has given the market a clear mechanism for multi-agent transactions. Most agents know it exists. Fewer use it consistently for off-plan deals, especially at launches, because launches move fast and paperwork feels like friction.
The Agent-to-Agent Contract, officially known as Form I, is a legally binding agreement used in Dubai to formalise the collaboration between two real estate agents. Signing Form I is mandatory when agents are working in collaboration. This form is an agreement between RERA-certified agents that secures the brokers’ clients, their listings, and states their commission split.
The agent-to-agent agreement specifies the property in question, the names and RERA registration details of both agents, the commission split arrangement (commonly 50/50 of the total commission), confidentiality obligations regarding client information, and terms governing how the collaboration will work.
Without Form I, one agent risks the other approaching the buyer directly and cutting them out of the commission. Equally, the listing-side agent risks the buyer going back to the seller independently and removing the listing agent from the deal. The form creates mutual accountability and makes the commission split legally enforceable.
What makes this especially relevant at off-plan launches is the tempo. In fast-moving markets like Dubai, agents sometimes proceed on trust or a phone call agreement when time is short. This almost always creates problems if the deal becomes complicated. A verbal commission split agreement is not enforceable under RERA regulations.
A WhatsApp message agreeing a 50/50 split is not Form I. A handshake in a hotel corridor is not Form I. If a dispute arises between two agents over who is owed what, the agent without a signed Form I is in a very weak position. Making Form I a standard part of any co-brokerage arrangement is not excessive caution.
Having a written agreement is essential to win any dispute. That is not an opinion. That is the consistent position of every dispute resolution body in Dubai that touches real estate commission.
What actually triggers the dispute
Commission disputes between agents in off-plan deals rarely start from bad faith. They start from ambiguity — and off-plan launches manufacture ambiguity at scale.
Consider the typical scenario. Agency A has been working a client for two months — café meetings, WhatsApp conversations, sending brochures, walking them through payment plan maths. Agency B has the same client in their database from a portal enquiry eighteen months ago. Both agencies bring that client to the same launch event. The client books a unit. The developer registers one brokerage against the sale. The other brokerage calls their agent and says: sorry, we’re not on record.
Now what? Agency A says their agent did the work. Agency B says their client relationship predates Agency A’s involvement. Nobody has Form I. Nobody agreed a split before the client signed. Commission disputes are fact-specific — who introduced whom, what was signed, what was paid. Without a signed agreement, this becomes a matter of who has better evidence and who is willing to fight longer.
There is a second, subtler version of this dispute — the one that happens inside a single brokerage but across teams. Two agents from the same agency both worked the same buyer. The agency collects the commission from the developer. The question of how much each agent gets is now an internal matter — and if there was no split agreed in advance, “internal matter” often means “whoever has more leverage with management gets more.”
Then there is the third version: the referral that was never formalised. An agent in one agency refers a client to a specialist off-plan team in another. They agree “something” over the phone. The deal closes. The off-plan team’s agency collects from the developer. The referring agent calls to collect their referral share. There is no Form I. Payment is processed through brokerage accounts; direct cash transfers between agents violate the rules and can lead to licence suspension. Without the paperwork to support a legitimate brokerage-to-brokerage payment, that referral is essentially uncollectable.
The escrow law protects buyers, not agents
It is worth being precise about this. Dubai’s off-plan regulatory framework is genuinely strong when it comes to protecting buyers. Law No. 8 of 2007 — the Escrow Account Law — establishes the mandatory escrow system, requiring developers to open a dedicated, project-specific escrow account with a DLD-approved bank, deposit all buyer payments into that account, and withdraw funds only in stages linked to verified construction milestones. Developers are only permitted to access funds in stages aligned with project completion, thereby protecting buyers and ensuring construction progress.
That is the buyer’s protection. The escrow account structure means a buyer’s instalments go into a regulated, ring-fenced account — not into a developer’s operating costs or another project’s budget.
But that protection does not extend to inter-agent commission arrangements. The law does not adjudicate which agent is owed what percentage of the developer’s brokerage payment. That is a commercial arrangement between brokerages — one that RERA’s forms are designed to document, but that RERA itself cannot resolve retroactively if neither party has paperwork.
Disputes centred on compensation or other financial claims will often need to be settled through the courts or arbitration eventually, regardless of how they’re first raised. That is an expensive, slow process for what should have been a five-minute form signed before the launch event started.
Why agents skip the form and regret it
The honest answer is that signing Form I before a launch feels premature. The buyer hasn’t committed. The project might not match what the client wants. Why formalise an arrangement that might never become a deal?
This logic is understandable. It is also exactly backwards.
The moment to agree the split is when both agents have goodwill toward each other — before anyone has made money, before either party feels their contribution is being undervalued, and before the developer has assigned one brokerage as the confirmed seller. Once the unit is booked and one brokerage is on the developer’s record, the dynamic changes immediately. The registered agent has the money. The unregistered agent has nothing but a claim. Negotiating a fair split at that point is negotiating from zero leverage.
When multiple agents are involved in a single listing, the commission is typically split among them. This can sometimes complicate the transaction, so clear agreements should be in place from the start.
There is also a practical truth about launches specifically. At a launch event, both agents know each other’s involvement — they are both in the room, or they are both texting the same buyer. That shared awareness is the optimal moment to agree. Once the booking confirmation lands, the cooperation is over and the competition begins.
What the split agreement needs to cover — concretely
A Form I signed in haste, with a vague commission percentage and no clarity on conditions, is barely better than nothing. The form needs to reflect the actual deal.
The unit and the project
The agreement should name the specific project and, ideally, the specific unit or unit type the collaboration covers. At a launch with hundreds of available units, a blanket Form I for “any unit in this development” creates its own disputes later — particularly if one agent closes a smaller unit and the other closes a penthouse.
The percentage split — stated numerically
“We’ll share it” is not an agreement. The form needs to state the split as a number: 50/50, 60/40, 70/30, whatever the parties negotiate. Commission-split agreements commonly reflect a 50/50 arrangement, but the market is not bound to that — what matters is that the number is written down and signed by both parties.
Which party introduced the buyer
Form I confirms which agent introduced the buyer and how commissions will be shared. This matters because “who introduced the buyer” is the single most contested fact in any commission dispute. If the buyer was introduced by Agency A but the SPA is handled by Agency B, who earns the larger share? There is no universal answer — but there is a clear answer if the parties agreed it in writing before the deal completed.
The VAT position
Since the introduction of VAT in the UAE in January 2018, a 5% Value Added Tax applies to real estate brokerage services. The inter-agency payment is a brokerage service. VAT applies. Both agencies need to be VAT-registered for the payment to flow correctly between them — an invoice without a valid VAT registration number is not a compliant invoice, and an agency that accepts an informal payment without proper invoicing creates a compliance exposure it does not need.
The condition for payment
The split agreement should state when payment is due. For off-plan, the developer typically pays commission either at SPA signing or at a later agreed milestone. The Form I should reflect that — so neither agent is waiting around expecting payment on a different timeline from the one that actually governs the developer payout.
The developer’s role in all of this
It is worth understanding how developers think about co-broke arrangements. Most developers who are active in the market operate structured broker programmes with registered commission rates and specific terms for co-brokerage. The developer’s obligation is to the agency they have on record — typically the one who registered the buyer through the developer’s own system.
The developer’s master agent must also be notified in writing before the referral fee is paid in co-brokerage situations. This is not bureaucratic obstruction — it is the developer making sure they are not paying double commission, and that the brokerage relationships they have are documented. If two agencies claim the same buyer and neither has told the developer about a co-broke arrangement, the developer’s default position is to pay the registered agency only. That is not the developer being unfair. That is the developer operating by their own contracts.
Some developers run their off-plan launches through a single master broker or a limited broker panel. In those cases, any outside agency bringing a buyer is functionally in a co-broke position relative to the master broker from the moment they introduce their client. The Form I — or an equivalent written agreement with the master broker’s agency — needs to exist before the buyer attends a viewing, not after.
Before the buyer’s agent can arrange viewings, share the property’s details, or participate in negotiations, both agents should ideally have documented their arrangement. This protects the listing agent’s client relationship, ensures the buyer’s agent receives their agreed share of commission, and prevents disputes about who facilitated the sale.
What a payment dispute looks like in practice
When there is no signed split agreement and two agencies both claim a commission, the sequence of events tends to follow a recognisable pattern.
The first conversation is friendly — both agents assume the other will be reasonable. One agency has the money; the other asks politely for their share. The receiving agency’s management gets involved. Now it is not agent-to-agent; it is agency-to-agency. The tone shifts.
The second conversation is formal. Emails are sent. Someone’s broker manager writes to someone else’s broker manager. Evidence is demanded — call logs, WhatsApp screenshots, viewing records. The agent who did the introduction starts excavating their phone for anything that proves their involvement. The agent who handled the paperwork argues that introduction alone does not equal commission.
The third stage is either a complaint to RERA or an acceptance that the money is gone. Many disputes — especially those involving compensation — ultimately need to be resolved through the courts, arbitration, or a negotiated settlement rather than a RERA ruling alone. Courts and arbitration cost time and money that most agents cannot justify for a single deal’s commission share. So the practical outcome of most unpapered inter-agent disputes is that one agent absorbs the loss, harbours resentment, and never co-brokes with that agency again.
That is the real cost: not just the lost commission on one deal, but the destroyed co-brokerage relationship across every future deal in a market where shared listings and no exclusive mandates mean that most deals genuinely require agency cooperation to close.
The timeline that matters: pre-launch, not pre-dispute
The solution to all of this is embarrassingly simple. The Form I needs to exist before the client pays a dirham — not as a reaction to a dispute, but as a precondition for starting the collaboration.
Here is the practical checklist:
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Before the launch event: If you know another agent is also working the same prospective buyer, open the conversation about the co-broke arrangement before you walk into the room together. Agree the split verbally, then formalise it in Form I before the launch goes live.
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Before any viewing is arranged: To protect both agents, sign an agent-to-agent agreement before working together. Form I must be completed in the event that two agents decide to work together, to ensure a professional relationship is established and to give each agent the right to compensation provided they contribute to the sale of the property.
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Before registration with the developer: If your buyer is being registered with the developer through another agency’s system, the split agreement must exist before that registration — because the moment one brokerage is on record with the developer, the power balance shifts.
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In writing, signed by both RERA-licensed agents: Only agents holding a valid RERA broker card can receive referral fees. Both parties to the Form I must be RERA-licensed. A form signed by one licensed and one unlicensed party is not enforceable.
The form itself does not take long. The conversation about the split is the part that requires professional judgment. Once that conversation happens and the number is agreed, executing the form is ten minutes of work that protects weeks or months of commission.
When the money arrives, both parties should be paid at once
There is a final structural point that goes beyond just signing a form. Even with a signed Form I in place, commission disputes can arise at payment stage — because the developer pays one agency, and that agency then has to internally pay the other. If that internal payment is delayed, disputed, or absorbed by the receiving agency’s management, the form-signing agent is waiting with their legal rights and no practical leverage.
The cleanest outcome — and the one that most reduces friction across every part of the deal — is one where both agencies are paid simultaneously, from the same payment event, without one having to trust the other to forward their share. That is not always achievable through current developer payment systems, which are set up to pay a single registered brokerage. But it is the standard to aim for, and it is what drives the argument for getting every piece of paperwork agreed and signed before the deal closes.
In any agency dispute, the paper trail determines the outcome. That principle applies just as much to agent-to-agent commission disputes as it does to buyer-agent conflicts. The paper trail is Form I. The time to create it is before the launch, before the viewing, before the booking — before anyone has anything to fight about.
The principle to take away
Dubai’s off-plan market is not short of opportunity. For off-plan sales, the commission is paid by the developer of the project, and the commission percentage can vary from developer to developer and from project to project. On a well-priced launch, with a competitive commission rate and a motivated buyer, the number on the table can be substantial. That number is worth protecting with a form that takes ten minutes to sign.
The agents who consistently get paid in full, on time, with no drama, are not necessarily the most aggressive negotiators. They are the ones who do the boring professional work before it matters — who treat Form I as a standard operating step, not a crisis response. They agree the split before the room goes quiet, before the booking goes in, before the developer cuts a cheque to someone else’s agency.
Split agreements signed late are arguments waiting to happen. Split agreements signed before launch day are deals that close cleanly — for everyone in the room.
