The cheque that never came
The deal closed on a Tuesday. Form F signed, seller’s cheques handed over, everyone shook hands in the lobby of a trustee office in Deira. The listing agent — call her Agency A — had brought the property to market, managed six months of viewings, and held a seller who nearly walked twice. The buyer’s agent — Agency B — sourced the client, negotiated two rounds of price revisions, and chased mortgage pre-approval across three banks.
The agreed split was 50/50. Agreed verbally. Over WhatsApp. Three weeks before the deal closed.
Agency B is still waiting for its half.
Nobody here is a villain. Agency A is not sitting on the money out of spite; there is a cashflow squeeze at the brokerage, a principal who travels, and a genuine dispute about whether the buyer’s agent actually introduced the client or whether the seller found the buyer through another channel first. The WhatsApp message is ambiguous. There is no Form I. There is nothing enforceable except a conversation that both sides remember differently.
That agent at Agency B is owed the commission. That is not the same as being paid. Understanding the gap between those two states — and what creates it — is what this article is about.
What “owed” actually means in Dubai
Commission is not owed simply because an agent showed someone a property or answered messages. It becomes legally payable only once a signed representation is in place and the transaction the agent was engaged to complete actually goes ahead.
That is the baseline. From the client’s side, the framework is relatively clear:
- Commission rates are negotiable but must be clearly defined in Form A (Seller Agreement) and Form B (Buyer Agreement) contracts.
- Real estate agent commission in Dubai is 2% of the property purchase price, regulated by RERA as a standard — though not a hard ceiling.
- All commissions are subject to 5% VAT under UAE law.
- Agent commission typically becomes legally due upon Form F signing.
For sales, the commission cheque is usually collected by the agent at the time of signing the Form F (MOU). However, the agent does not cash it immediately — it is held pending the transfer completing at the DLD trustee office.
So the moment of legal entitlement is clear enough on the client-to-agent side. What the law fixes is the framework around the fee: the broker must be licensed, the representation must be documented on the correct form, and the commission becomes payable only once that framework is satisfied.
The part that is not clearly fixed by any regulation is what happens when two agencies share a deal. That is where “owed” and “paid” start to diverge.
The shared-deal problem: no mandate, no guarantee
Dubai’s resale market runs overwhelmingly on non-exclusive mandates. Owners who sign Form A casually — or who allow agents to “test the market” without formal documentation — typically end up with the same property listed at different prices across multiple portals, sometimes by agents the owner has never spoken to. This damages the property’s perceived market position and creates commission disputes when offers eventually arrive.
When an offer does arrive through a buyer’s agent at a different brokerage, the two agencies must now agree on how to split a fee that only one of them has a written mandate to collect. The listing agent holds Form A. The buyer’s agent holds Form B. Neither form says anything about the other party.
Commission agreements between agents — for instance, when a buyer’s agent and a seller’s agent split a fee on a co-broke deal — are governed by RERA Form I, which must be formally signed before any commission is disbursed. This prevents the informal arrangements that create disputes in less regulated markets and gives both parties a documented, enforceable position.
Form I is the instrument that turns a verbal agreement into a legal one. When two brokers collaborate on a deal, the commission structure must be agreed upon in advance. Without a clear agent-to-agent agreement (commonly known as Form I), many agents end up in costly disputes or losing their commission entirely.
The problem is not that agents don’t know Form I exists. The problem is timing. The split conversation happens too late, under time pressure, with a buyer in the room or a seller threatening to pull out. Agents agree verbally to get the deal moving and tell themselves they will formalise it after. After never comes — or it comes after the relationship has soured because the cheque hasn’t arrived.
How disputes actually start
Commission disputes between agents in Dubai rarely begin with outright bad faith. They begin with ambiguity that hardens into conflict once money is on the table. Here are the four patterns that generate the most friction.
The “who introduced the buyer?” argument
A recurring dispute: you view a unit with Agent A, later find the same unit listed by Agent B at the same price, and sign through B — then A demands a fee. In the agent-to-agent version of this, the buyer’s agent at Agency B brought the client to the property. But the client had already sent an inquiry directly to Agency A’s portal listing three weeks before that viewing. Agency A now argues the introduction was theirs. Without a clear timestamp on a signed Form I specifying who introduced whom and when, this argument goes nowhere productive.
The split that “seemed obvious”
In Dubai, there is no official law dictating the exact split for agent-to-agent commissions, but a 50/50 split of the total commission is the commonly accepted standard for sale transactions. “Commonly accepted” is not legally binding. If Agency A is holding 4% commission from the seller and Agency B assumed a 50/50 split, Agency B assumed AED 80,000 on a AED 4M property. If Agency A decides it earned more because it held the listing for six months and the buyer came in on day one of marketing, Agency A might argue for 60/40 or 70/30. That negotiation should happen before Form F is signed. After transfer, the listing agent already has the cheque, and the buyer’s agent is negotiating from a position of zero.
The VAT gap
All commissions are subject to 5% VAT under UAE law. In a co-broke, the VAT obligation sits with the brokerage that issued the tax invoice to the client. When the split is paid across to the other brokerage, whether that internal transfer also carries VAT — and who accounts for it — is a detail that gets skipped in the rush to close. Two months later, the accounting team at one brokerage raises a query, and the phone calls begin. This is not a dealbreaker issue, but it adds friction to a payment that should have been clean.
The off-plan timing gap
Off-plan deals introduce their own commission mechanics. On most primary off-plan launches the developer pays the brokerage, so buyers usually pay no agency commission directly. That commission comes from the developer, and it is released on a schedule tied to the project — not to the date the agent closed the sale. Funds in the developer’s escrow account are released to developers gradually as project milestones are completed. Once these completed stages and conditions are checked and approved by RERA, developers can access the funds.
The agent’s commission from a developer on an off-plan unit may not arrive for months after the SPA is signed. If two agencies co-broke the introduction to the developer, the split agreement needs to survive that gap — and it needs to be in writing, signed by both brokerages, before anyone collects anything. An informal “we’ll split it when it comes” arrangement has a poor survival rate across a twelve-month construction payment schedule.
The rental side: faster deals, same gap
Rentals move faster than sales, which means the split conversation gets shorter and the documentation gets worse.
Agency commission on rentals is typically 5% of the annual rent, often with a minimum fee of around AED 5,000 for lower-priced properties. This commission is paid once upon contract signing. The Ejari registration locks the tenancy in legally; every rental contract in Dubai must be registered on Ejari within 30 days of signing.
In a rental co-broke — a landlord’s agent and a tenant’s agent working together — the fee is typically 5% paid by the tenant. The landlord’s agent, who holds the mandate, collects it. Then it is supposed to be split. But there is no rental equivalent of Form I that is universally used in the same structured way as the sales market. Some brokerages use their own internal co-broke letters. Others rely on email threads. Verbal variations are not enforceable, and disputes invariably default to the written terms. If there are no written terms, there is no default to fall back on.
The volume of rental deals magnifies this. An agent closing eight rental transactions a month cannot afford to have even two of those sit in “waiting to be paid” status for sixty days. At 5% on AED 120,000 annual rent, that is AED 6,000 per transaction — not a trivial amount to have floating.
Why the listing agent’s agency doesn’t always pay on time
Even when the split is properly agreed and signed, payment can still stall. This is worth being honest about, not to assign blame, but because understanding the mechanics helps the buyer’s agent protect their position.
The commission cheque from the client typically lands with the listing agent’s brokerage. That brokerage then needs to pay its own agent, deduct its split, and wire or cheque across the agreed share to the co-broke brokerage. That internal process involves:
- The brokerage’s finance team processing the inbound cheque
- Approval from management to disburse the co-broke share
- The other brokerage’s banking details being correctly on file
- No outstanding disputes about the amount
- VAT invoices being in order
Each of those steps is an opportunity for delay. If the listing agent’s brokerage has a cashflow squeeze, or if a principal is travelling, or if the VAT invoice from the co-broke brokerage has not arrived, the payment sits. The buyer’s agent is waiting, watching the deal that closed weeks ago show up in no bank account.
The form should record the agreed percentage, the responsible party, the trigger event for payment — typically Form F execution or DLD transfer — and VAT treatment. When Form I specifies the trigger event for the co-broke payment with the same precision, the buyer’s agent has a clear contractual basis to chase: “The trigger event was DLD transfer on [date]. Payment is now overdue.” Without that specificity, the conversation becomes a favour, not an obligation.
What the forms are actually for
It is worth stepping back and saying this plainly: the RERA form system exists to protect agents as much as it protects clients. Form A protects the listing agent. Form B protects the buyer’s agent. Form F covers property and financial details and the commission to be paid to the seller’s and buyer’s agents — but it is only a valid contract after it has been signed by the seller and the buyer, witnessed and dated by the agent.
Form F serves as the definitive agreement between buyer and seller, capturing every material term of the deal: the property details, the agreed price, the payment schedule, the transfer timeline, penalty clauses, and the agent’s commission. Once signed by all three parties — buyer, seller, and agent — Form F is registered with the DLD through the agent’s brokerage. This registration is what gives the document its legal weight.
But here is the gap: Form F records the total commission and who pays it to which brokerage. It does not record the split between two brokerages. That split lives in Form I — or in nothing at all.
When multiple agents are involved in the same listing, commissions are split between them according to signed RERA forms. This ensures transparency and avoids disputes. The word “according to” is doing heavy lifting there. It only ensures transparency and avoids disputes if the form was actually signed, with the split clearly expressed as a percentage of the total commission, with a payment trigger, and with the VAT position noted. A Form I that says “to be agreed” or that records a split in round numbers without specifying whether that is pre-VAT or post-VAT is not doing the job.
The “who chased the client” problem at closing
There is a version of the split dispute that surfaces specifically at the trustee office or in the final days before transfer. The listing agent, who has been managing the seller’s nerves and the NOC process, starts to feel that the buyer’s agent did not earn their half. The buyer got cold feet in week three, the price was renegotiated twice, and the agent at the other brokerage went quiet for ten days. Now the transfer is confirmed, and suddenly there is a conversation about whether the split should be revisited.
If Form I is already signed, that conversation has a clear endpoint: the signed percentage is what gets paid, and a retroactive renegotiation has no legal standing. Having a documented, enforceable position is not about distrust — it is about removing that late-stage conversation entirely. Both agents can focus on closing the deal rather than relitigating who earned what.
If Form I is not signed, the conversation has no clear endpoint, and the agent who holds the client’s cheque has more leverage than the one who doesn’t.
The specific problem with post-dated cheques on rentals
Rent property in Dubai is still commonly paid by post-dated cheque, usually in one to four instalments. The commission cheque, paid by the tenant at signing, is typically a separate manager’s cheque or personal cheque for 5% of the annual rent. That cheque goes to the brokerage that signed the tenancy — usually the landlord’s agent.
For a co-broke rental, the commission is in one brokerage’s hands from the moment of signing. The co-broke brokerage has to wait for that cheque to clear and then for the listing brokerage to process the split. If the tenancy was signed on a post-dated rent schedule across four cheques, the landlord’s agent might argue internally that they will “sort the split out” when the first cheque clears. The commission was due at signing. A post-dated rent schedule is irrelevant to when the commission is payable.
This is a small but regular source of friction in Dubai rental co-brokes. The only protection is a written co-broke agreement that specifies: the commission amount, the split percentage, and the payment date — at or before contract signing.
Documentation is not bureaucracy. It is the job.
There is a tendency among experienced Dubai agents to treat paperwork as something that slows deals down. That instinct is understandable — the market moves fast, clients get cold feet, and a deal that pauses to sort out forms can die in the interval. But the paperwork does not slow deals down. The disputes that arise when paperwork is missing slow deals down, damage relationships, and eat into income in ways that compound over a career.
All terms should be written in a formal agreement before payments or commitments. Transparent breakdowns of commission and service fees should be requested. This is not a client-facing recommendation — it is equally true of agent-to-agent arrangements.
The discipline of documenting the split before the client pays has one simple effect: it removes a category of dispute entirely. Not reduces it. Removes it. If the Form I is signed, the percentage is set, the trigger is specified, and the VAT treatment is clear, there is nothing to argue about. The only remaining question is whether the payment arrived on time — and that is a much simpler problem to resolve than a disputed split.
The principle that closes the gap
The gap between being owed and being paid is almost always a documentation gap. It begins with a verbal agreement made under pressure, survives through the deal because everyone is focused on the client, and surfaces after transfer when the money is in one party’s account and the other party is waiting.
The answer is not more trust. Dubai’s co-broke market runs on relationships, and those relationships are worth protecting. The answer is the sequence: agree the split, sign the form, before the client’s money moves. Not before transfer. Not before Form F. Before the client pays the commission — ideally when Form I is signed alongside or immediately after Form A and Form B are in place.
When every agent in a shared deal is paid at the same moment the transaction closes — when no one is waiting on a brokerage’s internal process, a principal’s approval, or a cheque to clear — the split conversation is already settled. The relationship between the two agencies is clean. The client sees a professional transaction. And the agent is not owed anything.
The agent is paid.
That is the only outcome worth engineering every deal around.
