The moment the deal feels done — and why it isn’t
You’ve walked your buyer through three launches, pulled them back from a competing agent’s pitch twice, and finally sat in the developer’s sales suite watching them sign the Sales and Purchase Agreement. The booking cheque is handed over, everyone shakes hands, and the developer’s representative says the Oqood will be issued shortly. For your buyer, the deal feels finished.
For you, the commission clock has only just started.
Understanding precisely what Oqood registration is, what it triggers, what it does not trigger, and where it sits in the sequence of events between SPA and payment is not an academic exercise. It is the difference between knowing when to follow up, when to escalate, and — most critically in a co-broke deal — when the split conversation needs to be locked down so neither agency is left arguing over a commission cheque that has already cleared on the other side.
What Oqood actually is
Oqood is the DLD’s system for registering off-plan property purchases before the building is completed and a title deed can be issued. The word “Oqood” means “contracts” in Arabic. That is the short version. The longer version is the one that matters to agents.
When a buyer signs a Sale and Purchase Agreement with a developer for an off-plan unit, the developer is required to register the SPA with DLD through the Oqood portal. That registration creates a record establishing the buyer’s interest in the unit, the agreed price, the payment plan, and the projected handover date.
Oqood is not a title deed. The title deed is issued only at handover, when the building is completed and the unit is delivered. In the interval between SPA signing and handover — which can run from one to four years or longer — Oqood is the buyer’s only registered evidence that they have an enforceable claim against the developer.
That interval is your working environment. During it, you are managing buyer expectations, tracking developer milestones, and — if there is a co-brokered element to the transaction — potentially still negotiating or chasing a commission split that was never properly papered.
What Oqood ties together legally
Oqood records the buyer’s interest in the off-plan unit, attaches the unit to the project’s escrow account, and triggers the 4% DLD registration fee. All three of those connections matter, and each has a downstream effect on the agent’s position.
The attachment to the project’s escrow account is not a technicality. Law No. 8 of 2007 concerning escrow accounts for real estate development projects in Dubai requires developers to establish dedicated escrow accounts for off-plan projects. Any payment made by a buyer for an off-plan property must be deposited into the project’s designated escrow account. Developers can only access these funds in accordance with regulatory requirements and approved construction progress. Oqood is what links your specific unit to that ring-fenced pool of money. Before Oqood registration, the connection between your buyer’s payments and a protected account is not formalised at the DLD level.
All real property units that are sold off-plan must be registered in the Interim Property Register according to Law No. 13 of 2008 Regulating the Interim Property Register in the Emirate of Dubai. Failure to register will make that sale void. That is the legal weight behind a registration that some agents treat as a paperwork formality.
The registration timeline: what is realistic
This is where agents get tripped up, because there is the official timeline and there is the real-world timeline, and they are not the same number.
DLD’s stated service time for processing the provisional sale registration, once submitted via Oqood, is one business day. One business day. That is DLD’s part of the process, once the developer has done everything correctly and submitted a clean application.
The catch is that the developer has to submit first, and that submission is entirely within the developer’s control. After the SPA is signed, the developer is legally responsible for submitting the sale to the Oqood system. The submission includes the signed SPA, buyer identification, unit details, and proof of initial payment.
The developer is required to register the SPA in the provisional register within 90 days of signing. Ninety days is a long window. In practice, while developers can technically register the sale right after the SPA is signed, many wait until 20–25% of the purchase price has been paid.
That waiting practice matters enormously to agents. It means the formal DLD record of your sale may not exist until the buyer has made at least their first milestone payment — and that payment timeline is governed by the individual developer’s payment schedule, not by anything you control. The timeline also depends on developer admin speed and DLD review workload.
The practical window you should plan for
Taking the full sequence together: SPA is signed, the buyer makes their initial booking deposit, the developer eventually submits to Oqood, DLD processes within a business day, and the buyer receives confirmation. The buyer receives an Oqood certificate within 7–14 days of payment. But if the developer delays submission — and many legitimately do — that whole window shifts.
Delayed registration is the most common issue. Some developers do not submit the Oqood application within the 60-day window. When a developer delays, you as the agent have no direct mechanism to force submission. Your leverage is limited to communication with the developer’s sales team, and even that is informal. The buyer can verify status through DLD’s official channels, but the registration action itself is performed by the developer.
From a deal-management standpoint, treat anything under 30 days as efficient, plan for up to 60 days as normal, and flag anything approaching 90 days as a conversation that needs to happen with the developer in writing.
What Oqood registration does not do for commission
Here is the clearest misconception to put down: Oqood registration does not trigger your commission payment from the developer.
Developers do not pay commissions at the point of sale. The standard payment schedule for a Dubai real estate brokerage ties commission release to buyer payment milestones. Most developers release 50% of the commission after the buyer’s first payment clears and the remaining 50% after the second or third installment. This creates a 30–90 day lag between the sale and full commission receipt.
So the sequence looks like this for most off-plan deals:
- Buyer books, SPA is signed
- Developer submits to Oqood (anywhere from immediately to up to 90 days later)
- DLD processes and issues Oqood certificate
- Buyer makes first scheduled installment payment
- Developer releases first tranche of your commission
- Buyer makes second or third installment
- Developer releases remaining commission
In off-plan, the developer pays the agent; the buyer pays zero commission. That structure benefits buyers and agents in the sense that commission conversations with the buyer are clean, but it means the agent’s cash position is entirely dependent on the developer’s payment administration and — more pressingly — on the buyer continuing to pay on schedule.
Clawback clauses protect developers from commission fraud. If a buyer cancels within 30–60 days of booking, the developer claws back 100% of the commission paid. If cancellation occurs within 60–180 days, the clawback is typically 50–75%. After 180 days, commissions are generally non-refundable.
This is the part of the timeline that agents sometimes gloss over when they are excited about a closing. The commission is not truly secured until the buyer has made enough payments to move past the clawback window. Once the SPA is terminated, the DLD will deregister the property from Oqood and reregister it in the developer’s name. A buyer who walks away does not just cost you the deal — it rolls back the entire registration, and in many cases pulls your commission with it.
Where co-broke splits collide with Oqood timing
Most Dubai off-plan deals that run through more than one brokerage have a fundamental structural problem: the commission split between the two agencies is rarely documented before the SPA is signed. It tends to be agreed in a WhatsApp thread, a phone call, or a verbal nod in the developer’s sales suite — at which point both agents assume the other remembers the number they agreed on.
Then the developer pays. And the number one agency received was not the number the other agency expected.
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.
In a sub-agency arrangement, a referring agent passes a client to a listing agent and receives a referral fee, usually 25% to 50% of the total commission. That range — 25% to 50% — is wide enough that two agents can leave the same conversation with entirely different expectations about what was agreed. One thinks 50/50. The other thinks 70/30 because they did the developer relationship work. Neither wrote it down.
The Oqood timeline makes this worse in a specific way: because commission is released in tranches tied to buyer payments rather than at a single point, there are multiple moments at which a split can be honoured, misapplied, or ignored. Agency A receives the first tranche from the developer, pays out internally, and tells Agency B their share is coming from the next tranche. Then the buyer delays a payment, the developer holds the second release, and Agency B has done a deal for which it has received nothing tangible four months later.
The specific friction points
The developer registers only one agency. Developers typically have a registered broker on their system — the agency that holds the developer’s formal brokerage agreement. In a co-broke, the introducing agency may not appear on the developer’s commission records at all. The entire commission goes to the registered broker, who then has a discretionary obligation to forward the agreed portion. “Discretionary” is the word that causes disputes.
Commission rates vary by project. For off-plan properties, the commission may vary depending on the project, developer, and brokerage agreement. Typically, the range is between 2% to 8%. In a hot launch, as sales commissions on off-plan sales hit 10–12%, more brokers are willing to share part of the proceeds they get from the developer with the property buyer. When the overall commission percentage fluctuates by project, two agents who agreed “50/50 of whatever the developer pays” may discover their respective shares are very different from what they mentally modelled when they shook hands.
Oqood delays create a grey period. Between SPA signing and Oqood registration, the deal exists in a contractual but not yet registered form. If a dispute about the split emerges in this window — and they often do, because this is when both agents are waiting and watching — there is no DLD record to point to as a settlement baseline. The deal is real but the documentation trail is thin, which gives both sides room to reinterpret what was agreed.
Clawbacks apply to the total commission, not just one agency’s share. If the developer claws back commission because the buyer cancelled, the registered broker takes the loss in the first instance. Whether that clawback is then shared proportionally with the introducing agency is not governed by any developer agreement — it is governed entirely by whatever the two agencies agreed, in whatever form they agreed it.
What solid documentation looks like before SPA signing
The right moment to lock down a co-broke split is before the SPA is signed — specifically before the buyer makes the booking payment that starts the Oqood clock. At that point, both agencies still have negotiating position, the developer is motivated to close, and no commission has been paid to anyone that might need to be redistributed later.
A properly documented split covers at minimum:
- The agreed percentage of total developer commission to be paid to each agency, stated as a number not a ratio that depends on the other agency’s interpretation
- Which agency is the point of contact with the developer for commission disbursement
- The trigger events for payment to the introducing agency (first developer tranche, second developer tranche, or a specific buyer payment milestone)
- What happens to the split if the buyer cancels and the developer exercises a clawback
- VAT treatment — on a secondary market purchase, the buyer conventionally pays 2% of the agreed sale price plus 5% VAT on the commission; in off-plan, where the developer pays the broker, the VAT obligation still exists and needs to be reflected accurately in how agencies invoice each other for their respective shares
That last point catches agencies out. Two licensed agencies invoicing each other for a commission split creates a VAT position that needs to be handled cleanly. An informal verbal agreement about the split does not create a VAT invoice. A formal co-brokerage letter does.
Agents are required under RERA rules to disclose their commission arrangement to all parties. That disclosure requirement is not just a compliance checkbox — it is the foundation that makes the split enforceable if one party later disputes it.
The assignment: Oqood resale and what happens to commission
Off-plan units increasingly change hands before completion. Through “off-plan resale” or “assignment of contract,” the Oqood can be transferred. Requirements include paying a minimum threshold of the property value, obtaining a No Objection Certificate from the developer, and transferring at a DLD Trustee Office, with the buyer assuming remaining payment plan installments.
An assignment sale is not the same commission structure as a primary sale. While developers pay the agent commission on off-plan properties, secondary resales of off-plan units require the buyer to pay 2% commission to the broker managing the resale. If the agent who originally sold the unit now resells it as an assignment, they are working under a different commission model. The developer is not paying. The buyer is. That has to be clear before the NOC conversation starts, because the buyer who thought they were dealing with a developer-paid agent is now being asked to produce their own commission cheque.
At handover, the Oqood converts to a full title deed without an additional 4% DLD fee — because the 4% was already paid at the Oqood stage. That is a useful fact to have for the assignment buyer who is nervous about the fee structure they are stepping into.
Developer delays and how they affect your position
You cannot control how quickly a developer submits to Oqood. What you can control is what you know, what you have in writing, and how you communicate with your buyer during the wait.
One frequent mistake is paying money too early. Developers sometimes push for quick payments to secure a unit, especially in popular launches. Buyers may feel pressure to comply, assuming paperwork will catch up later. That assumption carries risk. When your buyer is in that position and the Oqood has not arrived, they will be calling you. Having a clear, factual answer — the developer has up to 90 days to submit, DLD processes within a business day once submitted, here is how to verify the status — is not just good client service. It is the difference between a buyer who trusts the process and a buyer who starts to wonder whether the deal was real.
If the developer has not registered the purchase within 90 days of signing, the buyer can contact the DLD directly to file an inquiry. Registration status can be tracked through the Dubai REST app.
Know that flow. Walk your buyers through it proactively. An agent who explains what to expect at each stage prevents the kind of panic that leads buyers to make calls to other brokers, developers, or — in a co-broke — directly to the other agency in the deal.
The role of Trakheesi and what registered agents can actually prove
Every agent active in Dubai off-plan knows that the developer’s Trakheesi system holds the registered broker of record. The introducing agent in a co-broke deal often has no formal footprint in that system for the specific transaction. The developer’s commission paperwork names one entity; the internal arrangement between agencies is a separate matter that lives in email threads and WhatsApp messages.
This gap is not a problem when both agencies trust each other and the deal closes cleanly. It becomes a significant problem when the money is in and one agency is slow to pass on the agreed share.
RERA provides a framework for registered agents, and disputes about commission can be raised with DLD. But the strength of your position in any such dispute depends entirely on the quality of the documentation you have — not on what you remember being agreed verbally in the sales suite. A co-brokerage agreement signed before the SPA is executed is enforceable. A WhatsApp message that reads “sounds good, let’s do 50/50” is at best context.
When multiple agents are involved in the same listing, off-plan and resale property commissions are split between them according to signed RERA forms. This ensures transparency and avoids disputes. Signed RERA forms. Not confirmed messages. Not email threads. Signed forms.
The principle that removes the friction
Every friction point described in this article — the grey period before Oqood, the developer who only knows one agency, the clawback window, the tranche-by-tranche commission release, the co-broke split that lives in a chat thread — has a common cause. The terms of the deal, including who gets paid what and when, were not agreed in writing before the client’s money moved.
The Oqood clock starts with the SPA. The commission clock starts, for practical purposes, when the buyer’s first payment clears. The dispute clock starts somewhere between those two moments, usually when one of the parties in a shared deal realises the outcome is different from what they assumed.
The cleanest version of any off-plan co-broke deal is one in which the split is documented and signed before the SPA, the invoice structure is clear, each agency knows exactly which payment event triggers their share, and the clawback treatment is agreed in the same document. When the money arrives — in whatever tranche, on whatever schedule the developer uses — there is nothing to negotiate. Each party receives their agreed portion, the deal closes financially in a single clean motion, and neither agency is left chasing the other.
That is not an idealistic outcome. It is simply what happens when the paperwork matches the handshake. In a market where co-brokered off-plan deals are the daily reality for most active agents, getting this right before the SPA is signed is the single most effective thing an agent can do to protect their commission and their working relationship with the other agency in the deal.
The Oqood is the legal foundation of the buyer’s ownership. The signed split agreement is the legal foundation of your payment. Both need to exist. Only one of them is the developer’s job to produce.
