Oqood is the Dubai Land Department system that registers an off-plan property sale in Dubai's Interim Property Register. Law No. 13 of 2008 makes an unregistered off-plan sale void. The department charges the seller 2% of the sale value and the purchaser 2%, plus AED 10 knowledge fees and AED 10 innovation fees.
You wired the deposit. You signed the sale and purchase agreement. You were sent a PDF with the word Oqood on it, and nobody explained whether that paper means you own anything yet. Here is the part that costs people money: if your unit was never entered in the interim register, Dubai law does not treat your purchase as a weak sale. Dubai law treats it as no sale at all.
Last updated: September 2026
What is oqood in Dubai?
Oqood is the Arabic word for contracts. In Dubai the name belongs to the Dubai Land Department portal through which developers register off-plan sales, and by extension to the registration itself. The register behind the portal is the Interim Property Register, defined in Law No. 13 of 2008 as the documents the department maintains, in writing or electronically, in which sale contracts and off-plan legal dispositions are recorded prior to inclusion in the Property Register.
The word prior carries the whole idea. An off-plan unit does not exist yet as a finished, separately-titled property, so Dubai keeps a parallel register for units that are sold but unbuilt. Oqood is how a unit gets onto that parallel register, and Article 8 of the same law is how a unit later moves off it and onto the main Property Register as a titled home.
Is oqood the same as a title deed in Dubai?
Oqood is not a title deed. The two documents record different things, at different stages, in two different registers. The table below sets the difference out directly.
Article 8 of Law No. 13 of 2008 is the bridge between the two. Developers must enter completed projects in the Property Register once the competent entities issue the completion certificate, and must register sold units in the names of purchasers who fulfilled their contractual obligations. The same article lets the department make that registration either on the purchaser's request or on its own initiative.
A fuller walk-through of the second stage — what the certificate costs, what documents the application needs, and how to check a deed is genuine — sits in our guide to the title deed in Dubai.
What is the oqood fee in Dubai?
The Dubai Land Department publishes the fees for its Request to register the initial sale service as separate line items rather than as one combined figure. The department's own labels and amounts are reproduced below, unchanged.
Article 7 of Law No. 13 of 2008 limits what a developer can charge on top. The article states that no master developer or sub-developer may charge any fees on the sale, resale, or any other legal disposition of units, except those administrative costs which are approved by the Department. An unexplained administration charge attached to your registration is worth questioning against that article.
How do you get an oqood certificate in Dubai?
You do not file the oqood registration yourself. The Dubai Land Department lists the applicant category for the initial sale registration as Company, and the service channel as the Real Estate Developers Portal. The portal is built for developers, which is why searching for an oqood buyer login leads nowhere useful. Your developer files, and the department states the service time as one business day.
Because the filing is somebody else's job, the buyer's real task is verification. Two official routes exist, both run by the department itself.
- Dubai REST — the department's official smart real estate platform, on iOS and Android in Arabic and English. For off-plan projects the department says investors can obtain real-time information including the percentage of completion, actual pictures of the project, the escrow account number, and payments due.
- Property Status Enquiry — a department service that lets you enquire about a property's status by entering property data such as the area and land number. The department lists the service time as immediate, open to all, through the Land Department website and the Dubai REST app.
- The escrow account number — worth noting down. Off-plan payments in Dubai run through escrow accounts governed by Law No. 8 of 2007, and the account number is one of the details Dubai REST exposes for a project.
What if your developer never registered the sale?
If the registration was never made, the developer carries the consequence. The implementing bylaw of Law No. 13 of 2008, issued as Executive Council Resolution No. 6 of 2010, directs the department to register the legal disposition and to impose a fine of AED 10,000 on the developer. Raising a missing registration with the department is therefore a live route, not a complaint into a void.
Article 13 of the law sets out what follows a proven breach. Where the department establishes that a developer or a real estate broker has committed an act or omission breaching the law or any other applicable legislation, the Director General must prepare a report and refer the matter to the competent entities for investigation. Ask the department to confirm your registration in writing, keep the sale and purchase agreement and every payment receipt together, and raise the gap before handover rather than after it, when the unit is due to move onto the Property Register.
Is the initial contract of sale the same as oqood?
The initial contract of sale and oqood are two separate things, and conflating them is the most common off-plan misunderstanding in Dubai. The contract is the sale and purchase agreement signed between you and the developer. Oqood is the registration of that agreement in the Interim Property Register, which the department delivers through a service literally named Request to register the initial sale.
The department describes that service as allowing a real estate developer to register units sold off-plan, or land plots whose value has not been fully paid, at the provisional register. Signing produces a contract. Registration produces the register entry. Article 3 attaches validity to the second, not the first.
Article 10 adds a further condition. No developer or broker may enter into a private sale contract disposing of units off-plan in projects not approved by the competent entities, and any contract entered into before that approval is null and void. Project approval comes first, then the contract, then the registration.
Can you sell an off-plan property in Dubai before handover?
Yes, and the register entry is what makes it possible. Article 6 of Law No. 13 of 2008 states that real property units sold off-plan and entered in the Interim Property Register may be disposed of by way of sale, mortgage, or any other legal disposition. An off-plan resale in Dubai, often called an assignment, runs off the oqood entry.
A unit that never reached the register has nothing to transfer cleanly, which is why buyers on the resale side ask for proof of registration before money moves. The same logic explains why mortgage lenders want the registration in place.
What happens if you stop paying your off-plan instalments in Dubai?
The consequences run through the Dubai Land Department precisely because the unit sits on the interim register. The governing text is Article 11 of Law No. 13 of 2008 — but not the version most guides quote.
Under the current Article 11, the developer notifies the department, the department serves a 30-day notice on the purchaser and where possible mediates a settlement, and only then does the department issue an official document confirming the project's completion percentage. What the developer may do next depends on that percentage.
Is the 40% taken from the unit price or from what you have paid?
Two further points sit in the same article. The developer may take those measures without recourse to courts or arbitration, so the process is not a court case by default. Separately, paragraph (g) preserves the purchaser's own right to go to court or arbitration, and paragraph (f) makes the whole article part of public order, meaning a deal that ignores it is a nullity rather than a private arrangement.
Because the bands turn on a verified completion percentage, the figure Dubai REST shows for your project is not trivia. Checking it early is how an off-plan buyer understands where they actually stand.
Your handover date is a work date, not a finish line
Here is what the register entry is quietly counting down to. Oqood holds your unit while it is built. Article 8 moves it into the Property Register once the completion certificate lands. You collect the keys — and you walk into a unit finished to the developer's standard specification, not yours. Builder-grade flooring. A kitchen chosen by a procurement team. Bare walls where the wardrobes were in the brochure render.
The people who lose money at this stage are the ones who treat handover as the end. They accept the snag list late, they call the first contractor who answers, and they pay a premium because the whole building handed over in the same month and every decent trade in the area is already booked. Start the snagging inspection and the fit-out quotes before your handover date, not after it — our guide to snagging in Dubai covers the inspection half.
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Frequently asked questions about oqood in Dubai
What is oqood meaning?
Oqood is the Arabic word for contracts, and in Dubai it names the Dubai Land Department portal used to register off-plan property sales. Registering a sale through oqood places the unit in Dubai's Interim Property Register. Law No. 13 of 2008 states that an off-plan sale is void unless it is entered in that register, so oqood is what makes the purchase legally real.
Is oqood the same as title deed?
Oqood is not the same as a title deed in Dubai. Oqood records an off-plan unit in the Interim Property Register while the building is still under construction. A title deed records a completed unit in the main Property Register. Under Article 8 of Law No. 13 of 2008, developers must enter completed projects in the Property Register and register sold units to buyers who met their obligations.
How can I get an oqood certificate?
Your developer files the oqood registration, not you. The Dubai Land Department lists the applicant category for the initial sale registration as Company, and the channel as the Real Estate Developers Portal. Your job is to confirm the filing happened. Check your unit through Dubai REST, the department's official real estate platform, or the free-to-access Property Status Enquiry service.
What is the oqood fee in Dubai?
The Dubai Land Department publishes the initial sale registration fee as 2% of the sale value from the seller and 2% of the sale value from the purchaser, listed as separate line items. The department also lists AED 10 knowledge fees, AED 10 innovation fees, and an AED 1,000 self-registration fee for developers using the Oqood portal.
Is initial contract of sale the same as oqood?
The initial contract of sale and oqood are two different things in Dubai. The contract is the sale and purchase agreement you sign with the developer. Oqood is the Dubai Land Department service, named Request to register the initial sale, that enters that agreement in the Interim Property Register. Signing the contract is not registration, and only registration defeats the void rule.
Can you sell an off-plan property in Dubai before handover?
Article 6 of Law No. 13 of 2008 states that off-plan units entered in the Interim Property Register may be disposed of by way of sale, mortgage, or any other legal disposition. Being on the register through oqood is what makes an off-plan resale possible in Dubai. A unit that was never registered cannot be cleanly sold on.
Sources
Every legal quotation above was read from the Supreme Legislation Committee's Dubai legislation portal, and every fee and service detail from the Dubai Land Department's own service pages. Where a provision has been amended, the amending law was opened and checked rather than the original text being reused.
- Law No. 13 of 2008 Regulating the Interim Property Register in the Emirate of Dubai — Articles 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10, issued 14 August 2008.
- Law No. 9 of 2009 — superseded Articles 2 and 11 of Law No. 13 of 2008.
- Law No. 19 of 2020 Amending Law No. 13 of 2008 — superseded Article 11 again, issued 24 November 2020. The completion-percentage bands quoted above are from this text.
- Executive Council Resolution No. 6 of 2010 approving the implementing bylaw of Law No. 13 of 2008 — registration duty and the AED 10,000 developer fine.
- Dubai Land Department e-service pages: Request to register the initial sale, Request to complete the initial procedures data, Property Status Enquiry, and Dubai REST.
The English texts on the legislation portal carry the committee's standing note that, for interpretation and application, reference must be made to the original Arabic, which prevails in case of conflict. Nothing here is legal advice.
