The Deal That Goes Wrong Before It Starts
Picture it: a two-bedroom in Dubai Marina, priced at AED 1.85 million. The seller has given Form A to three agencies — not uncommon, not illegal, just the non-exclusive path some owners choose. Agency A has been showing it for six weeks. Agency B lists it on the portals and attracts a buyer who registers serious interest. Agency C happens to have a relationship with the same buyer and sends a viewing request the same afternoon Agency B’s agent is drafting an offer.
The buyer signs Form F. The sale goes through. Now every party believes they are owed something. The seller’s phone has messages from two listing agents. The buyer’s agent is arguing with the seller’s agent about who introduced whom. The commission cheques sit unsigned in a drawer while nobody can agree whose name goes on them.
This is not an exceptional situation. It is an ordinary one, and it plays out dozens of times a month across Dubai’s secondary market. The reason is structural: a deal with no exclusive mandate has, by design, multiple licensed agents competing to serve the same property. When they all sprint for the finish line at once, the question of who earns what — and who pays whom — is almost never resolved before the client parts with money. That gap, between the closing of a deal and the settling of the split, is where almost every commission dispute is born.
What a Non-Exclusive Mandate Actually Means
Under a non-exclusive Form A arrangement, the mandate is shared across multiple brokers simultaneously. Each holds a valid Form A and markets independently. Commission is paid only to the broker who introduces the successful buyer.
That last sentence is the whole problem compressed into fourteen words. The rule sounds clean — one winner, clear result — but it creates a brutal contest in a market where “introduction” is rarely a single moment in time. A buyer might have seen a Trakheesi-permitted ad from Agency A three months ago, been sent a WhatsApp message from Agency C two weeks ago, and attended a viewing arranged by Agency B last Tuesday. Which of those is the qualifying introduction? None of the Form A documents between the seller and each of those agencies governs that question directly. Each agent believes, sincerely, that they did the work.
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.
The confusion that owner behaviour creates flows directly downstream to the agents competing to close. When the listing price is inconsistent across portals, agents from different agencies end up talking to the same buyer with different numbers. That is not just a professional embarrassment. It is a factual dispute waiting to happen about what was agreed and by whom.
The “Introduction” Problem
Commission disputes are fact-specific — who introduced whom, what was signed, what was paid.
In an exclusive arrangement, the listing agent is the listing agent. There is no ambiguity about who holds the mandate; the seller has a single counterpart. If a co-broking situation arises, it is a deliberate choice, and the split is arranged between the two agencies before the buyer views the property.
In a non-exclusive arrangement, none of that structure exists. Three, sometimes four, agencies have equal mandate rights and none of them has any obligation to coordinate with the others. The seller’s obligation is simply to pay whoever brings the successful buyer. But because the Dubai secondary market is a small world — the same buyer pool circulates across portals, WhatsApp groups, and community networks — the same buyer routinely ends up in contact with multiple agents.
For rentals, multiple agents can represent the same listings; however, for secondary sales, a maximum of three agents can represent a single property. That ceiling matters. It does not resolve the introduction contest; it caps how crowded the field gets. But three agencies competing for one commission on a single unit is still more than enough to generate a serious dispute.
The courts and RERA both take a facts-first approach when these cases arrive. Who has the clearest paper trail? Whose Form B with the buyer was signed before the viewing? Whose communication log most persuasively shows an ongoing and specific client-property relationship? These are the questions that determine outcomes — and most non-exclusive deals are not built to answer them cleanly.
Why Form I Does Not Always Save You
In transactions where both the seller and buyer are represented by different agents, Form I becomes necessary. This agreement between the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent clarifies the commission structure and how it will be divided between the two parties. Form I ensures transparency in agent compensation and prevents disputes over commission sharing, creating a clear framework for cooperation.
Form I is excellent. Use it every time two agencies are genuinely co-broking. But it is a tool designed for a specific scenario: two agents who have already agreed to work together on a specific deal. Its weakness is that it arrives late — typically at or after the offer stage — and it requires both sides to sit down and agree on terms at exactly the moment when both sides feel most possessive about their commission.
One of the most sensitive aspects of any transaction is the agents’ commissions. When two agents are involved, there must be clarity on who is entitled to which commission, whether each agent is paid by their own client or whether there is a sharing arrangement, and how the commission is linked to the successful completion of the transaction. Form I helps structure this by documenting the cooperation between agents. While the exact commission percentages and payment sources are agreed between the agents and their respective clients and recorded in other forms such as Form A, Form B, or Form F, Form I ensures that the agents themselves are aligned and that there is a written record of their collaboration.
The gap in this framework is timing. Form I is executed between agents who have already agreed to co-broke. In a non-exclusive listing scenario, agents have not agreed to anything with each other. They are competitors on the same property. If Agency B’s buyer ends up transacting on a unit that Agency A has been marketing for six weeks without any prior co-broking agreement, there is no Form I sitting ready to sign, because the two agencies were never in the same conversation until the deal was almost done.
At that point, the listing agent may refuse to share. The buyer’s agent may argue they made the introduction. The seller — who owns the Form A with both parties — is caught in the middle and usually just wants to close. Verbal variations are not enforceable, and disputes invariably default to the written terms. If the written terms don’t cover what happens when two non-exclusive mandate holders collide over the same buyer, there is no written term to fall back on.
The Payment Timing Problem
Suppose the Form I does get signed in the right moment and the split is agreed — 50/50, or 60/40 in favour of the listing agent, or whatever the two agencies negotiate. A new problem arrives: the mechanics of getting paid.
Commission should always be paid by cheque made out to the brokerage, not to the individual agent personally. This is a RERA requirement and it creates a paper trail that protects both parties if a dispute arises later.
That paper trail only protects parties if the payment happens. In a two-agency deal, the commission cheque is almost always written to one brokerage first — typically the listing agency, because they hold the client relationship and are on the Form A. The buying agency then has to wait for a cross-agency payment. That payment is not governed by any regulatory deadline. It is governed by trust, institutional process, and whoever answers the phone at the other brokerage’s finance department.
This is where deals that closed cleanly in the eyes of the client quietly fall apart between agents. The listing agency collected AED 74,000. The buying agency is owed AED 37,000. The agreed Form I is signed. But the cheque from Agency A to Agency B is not coming this week, because Agency A’s account manager needs approval from their operations director, who is waiting on confirmation that the DLD transfer has registered. Three weeks pass. The buying agent’s principal is calling. Accusations of bad faith emerge. A clean transaction gets annotated with a simmering dispute that may eventually land at RERA’s door.
Brokerages routinely handle developer co-broking agreements, RERA-regulated commission caps, performance-tiered split structures, project-specific bonus schemes, and multi-agent team deals — all simultaneously. Managing these variables manually through spreadsheets or disconnected accounting tools creates chronic errors, agent disputes, delayed payments, and compliance risks under Dubai Land Department and RERA regulations.
The operational gap is real. Most agencies in Dubai do not have a formalized process for paying another brokerage. They have a process for paying their own agents. Inter-agency payments sit in a grey zone between two separate finance departments, neither of which considers the other a priority.
Off-Plan Co-Broking: A Different Set of Risks
The secondary market is not the only terrain where this problem appears. Off-plan is simpler in one respect — buyers do not pay commission on off-plan properties in Dubai, as developers usually pay the brokerage directly to market and sell the project. The developer’s commission comes out of the project margin, and the buyer is not writing a commission cheque.
But that simplicity ends quickly when two agencies are involved in the same sale. Developers have their own co-broking rules, and those rules vary significantly by developer. Some pay 100% to the registered selling agency and leave the split to be resolved between agents. Others will pay registered co-brokers directly, but only if the co-broker is registered on the developer’s own system before the booking form is submitted.
The phrase “before the booking form is submitted” is doing a lot of work there. In a hot launch, that window can be ninety minutes. An agent who brings a buyer to another agency’s developer launch, helps push the buyer to commit, and gets the booking form submitted before their co-broker registration goes through may find that the developer has no obligation to pay them anything. The entire commission flows to the listing agency, and now the two agents are negotiating a split after the developer has already paid — back to the same post-close, trust-based inter-agency payment problem.
When buying off-plan, you pay zero commission, the developer pays the agent 3–6%. At the higher end of that range, on a AED 3 million unit, that is a AED 90,000 to AED 180,000 commission. Splitting that after the fact, with no pre-agreed written terms and competing claims from two agencies, is a recipe for a dispute that dwarfs anything that happens in the secondary market.
How Rental Deals Generate Their Own Version of This Dispute
Residential rentals feel simpler — smaller numbers, faster cycles — but the mechanics of a non-exclusive listing produce identical friction. A landlord who has authorised multiple agencies to lease a unit may receive an offer through Agency C the same afternoon that Agency A has introduced a tenant who has not yet submitted a formal application.
Ejari is Dubai’s mandatory online registration system for all tenancy contracts. Without Ejari registration, your tenancy contract is not recognised by any government authority in Dubai. The Ejari registration happens after the tenancy is agreed, which means the commission dispute question — who introduced the tenant who ultimately signed — is already baked in by the time the contract is being formalised.
In rentals, it is usually the tenant who pays 5% of the annual rent to the broker. This payment is due once the lease agreement is signed. The tenant writes one cheque. If two agencies both claim to have introduced them, only one cheque was written, and the dispute between agencies starts the day the tenant moves in.
WhatsApp and email messages can still be evidence in a commission dispute — and that cuts both ways. It means agents who have done the work and can document their introductions have a genuine chance of prevailing. It also means that every message thread between an agent and a prospective tenant is potentially exhibit material if the deal ends up in a dispute process.
The VAT dimension adds another layer. Do not assume residential rental commission is automatically VAT exempt. The residential lease itself may have a different VAT treatment, but the broker’s agency fee is a separate service. If the brokerage is VAT-registered and the service is taxable in the UAE, 5% VAT may be charged on the commission. When a split is agreed late — after the client has already paid — neither agency may have issued a proper VAT invoice for their portion of the fee. That creates a compliance gap on top of the payment dispute.
Where Disputes End Up
Dispute resolution follows a staged approach: negotiation, RERA complaints, Rental Disputes Settlement Centre, then courts. At each stage, the costs are time and energy. At the early stages, the outcome is often a compromise that satisfies nobody. At the later stages, the outcome is whatever the documentation supports — and a party with strong paper is likely to fare better than a party with persuasive but undocumented claims.
Vague descriptions without documentation are the most common reason a complaint stalls. That observation from RERA’s complaint process applies directly to inter-agent commission disputes. If the Form I was signed late, if the split was agreed over the phone, if neither agency issued a proper VAT invoice to the other, then neither agency has the documentation to make a fast, clean complaint. The case drags.
The Dubai Land Department regulates registered brokers and handles complaints about broker conduct — this is the route for unregistered practice, double-dipping, misrepresentation, or fee disputes with a brokerage. These pathways exist and they function. But using them costs deals — not just the one in dispute, but the relationship between the two agencies, the time of everyone involved, and the focus that should be on the next listing.
Most agents who have been through a RERA complaint over a commission split will tell you the same thing: the process validated their position, but the cost of getting there was not worth it compared to what a well-structured agreement up front would have taken — about twenty minutes.
The Anatomy of a Clean Deal vs a Disputed One
The difference between a deal that pays cleanly and one that ends in a dispute usually comes down to four specific gaps. Each gap is addressable before the client pays.
Gap one: No agreed split before the viewing. When Agency B requests access to Agency A’s non-exclusive listing, the two agents exchange pleasantries about the client and the price. Nobody discusses the split. Everyone assumes it will be 50/50, or that it will be sorted out after. After is too late. The agreement needs to exist before Agency B’s buyer walks through the door.
Gap two: No signed Form I before the offer. Form I is designed to protect an agent’s listings and clients. It must be completed in the event that two agents decide to work together. This ensures a professional relationship is established and gives each agent the right to compensation provided they contribute to the sale or rental of the property. “After the offer is accepted” is not the right moment. The offer acceptance is already a fait accompli — the leverage has shifted entirely to the listing agency, who can now argue about what the split should be from a position of control.
Gap three: No mechanism to get both parties paid at the same time. The standard process — one commission cheque to one brokerage, followed by a voluntary payment to the second — creates a structural dependency. The buying agency’s payment depends entirely on the goodwill and process efficiency of the listing agency. There is no contractual deadline, no interest on late payment, and no easy remedy short of a formal complaint.
Gap four: No clear VAT treatment on the split. The Dubai market standard is 2% of the sale price plus 5% VAT on the commission. The form should record the agreed percentage, the responsible party, the trigger event for payment, and VAT treatment. In a co-broke, the VAT question is: does the listing agency invoice the buyer for the full commission including VAT, and then pay the buying agency a portion net of VAT? Or does each agency invoice separately? If this is not sorted before the client pays, one or both agencies will issue a non-compliant invoice later, and correcting it requires cooperation from the other side — which may no longer be forthcoming.
The Principle That Prevents All of It
These four gaps share a common origin: the split was not agreed, documented, and made ready to execute before the client paid.
The exclusive mandate solves this problem by design. There is one listing agent. If a buyer arrives through a second agency, the co-broking arrangement is negotiated before any viewing happens, because the listing agent controls access. The mandate sits with a single broker for a defined period. Only that broker may list and market the property during the exclusivity term. That control creates the conditions for a structured co-broking conversation. The listing agent can say: “We will introduce you to our seller’s property on a 50/50 split. Sign Form I with us before the viewing.” The buying agent can evaluate that offer and proceed on clear terms. Both parties enter the deal knowing exactly what they will be paid and when.
The non-exclusive mandate offers none of that structure. Three agents, each holding a valid Form A, each marketing independently, each in contact with overlapping buyer pools — and none of them in any obligatory communication with the others until a buyer gets close to an offer.
The structural fix is not complicated to describe, though it is harder to enforce in a market built on speed and informality. Every time two agencies are involved in the same deal — whether through co-broking on a secondary listing, a developer launch, or a shared tenant introduction — the split should be agreed in writing, signed by both agency principals (not just the agents), and structured so that both agencies receive their payment simultaneously, from the same funds, at the moment the client pays. Not before the client pays. Not after. At the same time.
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. That is the regulatory ideal. The market reality is that signed RERA forms often arrive late, split amounts are agreed verbally, and the payment to the second agency happens whenever the first agency gets around to it.
The agents who avoid commission disputes are not the ones with better lawyers or more detailed complaint files. They are the ones who established the terms before the deal closed, got those terms on paper with both agency principals’ signatures, and ensured that the payment mechanics — including VAT treatment and timing — were sorted before the client’s cheque was written.
A disputed deal that ends in a resolution three months later, after a RERA complaint and two uncomfortable phone calls, still paid. But the time and goodwill that got spent along the way will not be recovered. The agents who build their practice on deals that pay cleanly, every time, do one thing consistently: they refuse to start the work until the split is agreed and signed. Not hoped for. Not assumed. Agreed and signed.
That is the protection the exclusive mandate gives you by default. On every deal without one, you have to build that protection yourself — before the client pays.
