--- title: "Why off-plan commissions take longer than resale" description: "The real mechanics behind off-plan commission delays in Dubai — who pays, when, and why the split is the biggest risk an agent carries." category: "off-plan-developers" readingTime: 13 --- ## The deal is done. So why isn't the money there? You brought the buyer. The developer's sales team signed them in. The SPA is executed. The Oqood registration is underway. Your client is excited, the developer is happy, and you have every right to feel that this one is closed. Then you wait. A week passes. Two. You follow up with the developer's broker-relations team. Someone says the commission letter is being processed. Another contact says it has to go through finance. Then a question surfaces: the developer has your agency on file, but they are not certain whether you or another agency brought the lead first. Meanwhile, if another agency was involved and the split was discussed verbally over WhatsApp but never formalised in writing, you now have a dispute inside a delay. This is not unusual. It is structural — built into how off-plan commissions work — and understanding exactly why it happens is the first step to controlling it. ## Resale pays at a fixed, legal moment. Off-plan does not. In a secondary-market resale, the commission payment moment is well-defined. The key milestone is Form F, the RERA-standard MOU: most agents consider commission earned when buyer and seller sign it, and this is supported by RERA in disputes. From there, the deal moves to the DLD trustee office, the transfer happens, and commission is paid in the form of a manager's cheque at the time of deal registration. The commission amount, the payer, and the moment of payment are all anchored in a chain of regulated events with a clear terminus: the title deed issues, money changes hands, done. For off-plan properties, developers often pay the commission directly to the agents, and buyers do not pay commission when purchasing an off-plan property. The commissions in this case are usually higher compared to the secondary market and can go up to 8% of the sales value. That is attractive on paper. But it also means the payment sits entirely in the developer's hands — on their timeline, through their finance department, against their internal processes, and subject to their verification of who actually brought the deal. There is no trustee office. There is no single legal moment equivalent to the title deed transfer that forces the payment to happen. Instead, you have: - A commission letter to request - An invoice to raise - A VAT component to account for - An internal developer process to navigate - And if another agency is involved, a split to prove Each of those steps is an opportunity for friction, delay, or dispute. ## The escrow account ring-fences buyer money — not yours One thing that confuses agents early in their off-plan career is the assumption that the escrow account somehow protects or organises agent payments. It does not. All buyer instalment payments flow into that escrow account, which is managed by a RERA-licensed trustee — typically a bank. The developer may only withdraw funds upon reaching verified construction milestones certified by a RERA-approved engineer. This is the legal framework established under Dubai's guarantee account law for real estate developments, and it exists to protect buyers from a developer using their money for something other than building what was sold to them. All buyer payments go directly into the project escrow account — not into the developer's general account. The developer cannot access these funds freely. Funds are released to the developer only after RERA's authorised inspectors have verified that the construction milestone has been physically reached. Your commission is not a buyer payment. It sits outside that protected structure. It is a contractual obligation the developer owes to your agency — a service fee for bringing a transaction — and it is governed by whatever the developer's brokerage agreement says, not by the escrow framework. That means it is paid from operating funds, processed through finance, and subject to all the friction of a corporate accounts-payable function rather than the relative certainty of a regulated legal mechanism. This is the foundational difference. A resale commission is collected from a buyer who is sitting across from you at the trustee office. An off-plan commission is collected from a corporate entity that may have dozens of active projects, hundreds of active broker relationships, and its own payment cycles. These are fundamentally different creditor situations. ## Being on the approved broker list is necessary, not sufficient Advertising an off-plan project or unit generally requires a no-objection certificate from the developer. More broadly, before an agency can legitimately earn commission on an off-plan sale, Trakheesi is the Dubai Land Department's system for issuing real estate advertising permits, and before a brokerage can publish a Dubai listing, it applies for a permit through the Trakheesi system, with DLD issuing a permit number tied to that specific property and advert. Being registered with a developer — whether through their broker portal, a signed brokerage agreement, or inclusion on their approved list — gets you to the starting line. It confirms your agency is authorised to market and sell. But it does not automatically document that you, specifically, brought the buyer who signed the SPA last Tuesday. That documentation burden falls on the agency, and it is where many commission delays actually originate. 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. According to Dubai law, if multiple brokers are working on the same property or listing, the client must sign a contract with each broker, which is registered with the Dubai Land Department. What that means in practice: where two agencies are co-operating on a deal — one holding the developer relationship, one bringing the buyer — the lead registration dispute is often the first thing that stalls payment. If both agencies submitted the same client's details (which happens more than anyone likes to admit in a market without exclusive mandates), the developer's compliance process has to adjudicate before any payment can go out. ## How a co-broke becomes a waiting game Dubai's resale market runs heavily on shared listings. There are no exclusive mandates that legally prevent another agent from also bringing a buyer to the same property. Off-plan is no different. When a brokerage both lists a developer's project and brings the buyer, dual agency is standard and generally less problematic since the price is set by the developer. But when two separate agencies are involved — a listing agency with the developer relationship, and a selling agency who actually sat with the client — the split has to be agreed, documented, and paid. 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. The word "sometimes" in that sentence does a lot of work. In practice, "clear agreements from the start" is exactly what most co-broke arrangements do not have. What they have is a WhatsApp message, a verbal understanding, and goodwill — none of which holds up when finance is deciding where to send a significant cheque. Here is how the typical off-plan co-broke delay unfolds: **Step one:** Agency A has the developer relationship and the Trakheesi permit to advertise the project. Agency B has a client who is ready to buy. **Step two:** Agency B reaches out. There is a conversation. A percentage split is discussed — often 50/50, sometimes other ratios. It is agreed in principle, or at least understood to be agreed. **Step three:** The client is registered by Agency A through the developer's CRM. The SPA is signed. Oqood registration begins. Both agencies are happy. **Step four:** The developer issues a single commission letter — to Agency A, the registered introducing broker. Agency B waits for Agency A to pay the split. **Step five:** The delay. Maybe Agency A is slow. Maybe there is a genuine internal query about what was agreed. Maybe the person who made the original arrangement has since left. Maybe the split percentage is now being contested. Agency B has no direct claim on the developer for their share. Their only recourse is against Agency A. And Agency A may not release anything until they have received the developer's payment in full, which creates a chain of delays that the buying agent — who did the client work and earned their share — has no mechanism to accelerate. If several agents share work on one property, the total commission is split between them according to agreed roles from the start. Clear terms prevent disputes. The absence of clear written terms is the core problem here, and "from the start" is doing critical work in that sentence. ## The developer payment cycle itself adds time Even in a clean, undisputed single-agency off-plan deal, the developer's own payment process adds time that a resale simply does not have. 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. That variation is significant. Some developers have structured, prompt broker relations processes with published commission rates and predictable payment windows. Others pay when their own cash flow allows, or when their accounts team gets to the invoice. There is no regulatory deadline imposed on developers for paying broker commissions the way there is a regulatory framework for releasing escrow funds to themselves — the escrow regime protects buyers, not agents. The commission is built into the developer's marketing and sales structure and paid to the authorised brokerage handling the transaction. "Marketing and sales structure" is the key phrase. That budget exists, but accessing it requires an invoice, a commission letter, sometimes a signed acknowledgment of the split where other agencies are involved, and a wait for the developer's payment cycle to run. For major developers with high transaction volumes, that cycle may run on a weekly or monthly basis. For smaller developers, it can be more irregular. A Dubai real estate brokerage receives 3–7% from developers for each off-plan unit sold, and agents receive their split of this amount. Consider the math: an agent selling one off-plan apartment at AED 1,800,000 with a 5% developer incentive generates AED 90,000 in gross commission. At a 60% agent split, that is AED 54,000 from a single deal. Numbers like that make the wait feel acceptable while you are in it. But they also make disputes expensive — which is exactly why disputes happen. ## VAT adds a layer that resale agents often underestimate The UAE's 5% VAT applies to brokerage commission as a service, calculated on the commission amount — not the property price. In a resale, the VAT component is collected from the buyer alongside the commission, at the trustee office, on the day of transfer. It is immediate and clean. In an off-plan deal, the VAT element on the commission invoice has to be collected from the developer. If the developer's accounting team raises a query about the invoice — a wrong tax registration number, a mismatch between the invoice amount and the commission letter, a question about the VAT treatment — that becomes another reason to pause the payment. Agencies that do not have a clean, accurate invoicing process for off-plan deals will find their payments delayed by administrative queries that have nothing to do with the deal itself. This is especially relevant in co-broke situations where each agency invoices separately. If the developer receives two invoices that together exceed the agreed total commission, their finance team will stop both until the discrepancy is resolved. Getting the VAT invoicing right — with the correct amounts, correctly split, correctly documented — is not a bureaucratic nicety. It is a payment prerequisite. ## Construction delays extend the pain when commission is milestone-linked Most off-plan commission structures pay on SPA signing or shortly after. But some developers, particularly on post-handover payment plan products, tie a portion of the commission to later milestones — completion, handover, or post-handover instalment collection. These structures are disclosed in the broker agreement, and agents who accept them are knowingly accepting a longer wait. Off-plan payment plans in Dubai typically require an initial deposit, followed by milestone-linked instalments during construction, with the balance due on handover. When those construction milestones shift — and they do — any commission tied to a milestone also shifts. In 2024, Dubai developers cut median construction delays from 4 months to around 2 months, a marked improvement on the 7-month lags seen in 2022. Even a two-month delay on a milestone-linked commission payment is two additional months of your capital sitting idle. The practical lesson: read the commission structure in the broker agreement before the deal closes, not after. Know exactly which portion of your commission is payable at SPA and which portion is deferred. If a significant portion is milestone or handover-linked, price that timeline into your cash flow planning — not your deal-closed celebration. ## Where disputes start and how they escalate Off-plan commission disputes between agencies almost always originate in one of three places: **Lead ownership.** Two agencies claim to have introduced the same buyer. The developer, often having no formal mechanism to adjudicate, either pays the agency that registered first in their CRM or withholds payment until the agencies resolve it between themselves. **Split percentage.** The agreed split was verbal or implied. When payment comes through, one agency's recollection differs from the other's. Without a signed document, there is no clean resolution. **Payment sequencing.** One agency receives the full commission and is supposed to pass the other's share. The receiving agency delays, disputes, or withholds. The other agency has to pursue a civil claim — against a fellow agency, not the developer — with all the relationship damage that entails. 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. How that split works determines a lot about how each agent behaves during the deal. That is true in resale, and it is equally true in off-plan — with the added complexity that in off-plan, there is no DLD trustee office moment where everyone is in the same room and money moves simultaneously. RERA provides a framework for licensed agents to file complaints and seek resolution. According to Dubai law, if multiple brokers are working on the same property or listing, the client must sign a contract with each broker, registered with the Dubai Land Department. This is a prerequisite to the agent being entitled to remuneration. To ensure that an agent receives commission, it is imperative that a contract is signed and registered with the DLD. A dispute with a documented, registered agreement is a much stronger position than a dispute built on a conversation. ## What the resale process does that off-plan does not It is worth being explicit about why resale generally pays faster — because understanding the mechanism is what points to the fix for off-plan. In a resale transaction, by the time money changes hands, every agreed term is in writing. The Form F (MOU) documents the agreed price, the deposit terms, and the commission. Form F, RERA's standard MOU template, is signed by buyer, seller, and agent. A 10% deposit is paid at this stage. If there are two agencies, the split can be documented in the same process. When the transfer happens at the DLD trustee office, all parties are settled simultaneously — there is no sequence where one party receives and then passes on. The buyer pays, the commission cheques are drawn, everyone walks out of the trustee office resolved. Off-plan has no structural equivalent of that moment. The developer pays when they pay, through their process, and any co-broke split happens in a secondary transaction that the developer is not party to. This is not a flaw in RERA's framework — it reflects the reality that off-plan is a developer-to-buyer transaction in which the agent's role, while central, sits outside the regulated buyer-developer contract. ## The thing that removes the friction The agents who consistently get paid on time on off-plan deals — and who avoid the co-broke disputes that erode both relationships and income — share one habit: they settle the split before the buyer signs anything. Not after the developer pays. Not when the commission letter arrives. Before the client walks into the developer's sales office. That means: - A written split agreement between the agencies, signed by both, specifying the exact percentage and the exact basis of calculation before any deal proceeds - Clarity on whose name the commission letter will be issued to and how the other agency's share will be transferred — and by when - VAT invoicing agreed in advance, so there is no ambiguity about how two separate invoices will be structured and whether they will reconcile cleanly against the total developer commission The same logic applies inside a single agency with multiple agents involved. Who gets what, documented before anyone receives anything, is the only basis on which payment can be immediate rather than contested. The principle is simple: every party who is owed money should know exactly what they are owed, in writing, before the buyer pays the developer. When that is in place, payment is a process. When it is not, payment becomes a negotiation — and the party with the money has the leverage. That is true in resale. It is more true in off-plan, where the payment timeline is longer, the sums are larger, and there is no trustee office room where everyone settles at once. The agent who goes into an off-plan co-broke with a signed, specific split agreement is in a fundamentally different position from the one who goes in on a handshake. Both may be equally skilled. Only one of them controls their own cash flow. Agreeing the split upfront, in writing, before the client pays — and structuring payment so that all parties receive their share simultaneously rather than sequentially — is not just good practice. In off-plan, it is the only reliable way to get paid at the speed resale agents take for granted.