The Moment the Money Gets Complicated
Picture the situation. Two agencies have been working the same Villa in JVC — one brought the listing from a seller who gave no exclusive mandate, the other sourced the buyer and ran every viewing. The buyer signs the Form F (MOU), hands over a manager’s cheque for the 10% deposit, and the deal starts moving toward transfer. Both agents shake hands. Everyone is happy.
Then the question lands: how exactly are we splitting this?
If that question has not already been answered in writing, the handshake means nothing. What follows is a negotiation in which one side has the cheque and the other does not, timelines start slipping, and goodwill evaporates faster than any Jumeirah lease ever written. This is not an unusual situation in Dubai. It is the default situation for a market where shared listings with no exclusive mandate are routine, where a single buyer can walk through doors held open by three different agencies, and where the commission only crystallises as real money when the DLD transfer is done.
The split conversation should have happened before the first viewing. This article explains what happens when it does not — and what changes, practically and financially, when it does.
Why Dubai’s Market Creates Split Disputes by Design
Most mature real estate markets enforce some version of an exclusive listing. Dubai’s secondary market does not. According to RERA, a property owner can only complete three Form A agreements at a time and deal with a maximum of three brokers. That means the same property can be legitimately listed by three different agencies simultaneously, with buyers flowing to any one of them. In this environment, co-broke is not the exception — it is how a large portion of secondary market transactions actually close.
When multiple agents are involved in a single listing, the commission is typically split among them. The structural problem is that “split” means different things to different people until someone writes a number on a form. One agent assumes 50/50. The other assumes they keep 60% because they hold the Form A. Nobody confirmed it. The deal closes, and suddenly two adults are arguing about money over a WhatsApp thread at 11pm.
The deeper issue is the way the Dubai transaction sequence is laid out. Agent commission — typically 2% of the sale price — becomes legally due upon Form F signing. That is the moment the client obligation to pay crystallises. But the inter-agency obligation — what the listing agent owes the buyer’s agent, or vice versa — is a separate agreement, governed by a separate form, negotiated between separate parties. If that separate agreement has not been signed before the Form F is executed, you are negotiating your split after the client’s money is already in play. That is always a worse position to be in.
Form I: The Document That Exists Precisely for This
RERA created Form I for exactly this situation. Form I is an agreement between two agents who act on behalf of the buyer and the seller. The form protects the agent’s rights, listings and clients. Form I also ensures a professional relationship between two or more agents. RERA Form I is mainly applicable when several agents are involved in one joint transaction concerning property sale or lease.
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.
The Agent-to-Agent Contract, officially known as Form I, is a legally binding agreement used in Dubai to formalise the collaboration between two real estate agents. It is not optional paperwork. A breach of contract can lead to penalties, commission forfeiture, or disputes with RERA/DLD.
The question is not whether to use Form I. The question is when. And the answer — always — is before the deal closes, ideally before the first showing, and at the absolute latest before the Form F is put in front of the buyer.
Form I governs the commission split and professional conduct when two brokers collaborate — one representing the buyer, one the seller. Skipping Form I is the leading cause of commission disputes in Dubai.
What “Before the Deal” Actually Means in Practice
There are three natural points in a resale transaction where the split can be agreed. Only one of them reliably protects both agents.
At first contact between agents
This is the right moment. When agent A calls agent B to request a viewing on a property that agent A has listed, that call is the beginning of a working relationship. The split should be part of the same conversation as the viewing details. It does not have to be confrontational. “What are you proposing for the split if your buyer transacts?” is a normal professional question. Get the answer, document it, and move toward a signed Form I before any viewing takes place.
Discuss the commission at the start of the collaboration. Verbal agreements are risky. Draft the Form I as soon as possible to secure your commission.
This approach has a secondary benefit: it screens out agents who are unwilling to formalise the arrangement. Relying on verbal agreements, not discussing the commission split until late in the process, assuming a 50/50 split without confirmation, and working with agents who refuse to sign Form I are the most common mistakes that cost agents their commission.
At Form A stage
If the listing agent has a properly executed Form A from the seller and is co-listing on portals, they can make their split terms visible to collaborating agents from the outset. Some agencies in Dubai now include their standard co-broke split in their Form A terms or in a written co-broke policy they share with incoming agents. This is cleaner than a phone call because it removes the negotiation from the deal-heat moment and puts it in a policy context.
The limitation is that not every buyer’s agent will read — or have seen — that co-broke policy before calling. So the responsibility still falls on the listing agent to confirm the agreed split in writing with the specific collaborating agent on the specific transaction, before that transaction progresses.
After Form F is signed
This is the dangerous zone. The client has committed. The buyer’s cheque is held. The transfer countdown has started. Now one agent calls the other to negotiate a split, and the dynamic is entirely different. Whoever holds the relationship with the paying party has leverage. The other agent is chasing.
Commission disputes are fact-specific — who introduced whom, what was signed, what was paid. When those facts are not documented before the deal closes, both agents are exposed. If the dispute reaches RERA or the DLD, the regulator will look for paper. In a dual-agency dispute, the paper trail determines the outcome. A signed Form I is paper. A WhatsApp message is arguable. A verbal agreement at a viewing is nothing.
The Income Effect of Getting This Wrong
The impact on earnings is more significant than most agents calculate, because a split dispute does not just cost you half a commission — it costs you time, relationships, and sometimes the entire commission.
Consider the mechanics. On a AED 2 million resale transaction in the secondary market, the buyer conventionally pays 2% of the agreed sale price plus 5% VAT. That is AED 40,000 in gross commission before VAT. In a two-agency co-broke, each side expects roughly AED 20,000. When the split is disputed, several things can happen:
- The deal transfer is delayed while agents argue, increasing the risk that the buyer gets cold feet or a mortgage offer expires.
- One agency pays the other after the fact — but only after an escalation that damages the inter-agency relationship permanently.
- The dispute goes to RERA. Outcomes are unpredictable without documentation, and the time cost alone can exceed the disputed amount for a lower-value transaction.
- One agent backs down and accepts less than agreed, simply to get paid at all.
None of these outcomes are inevitable. All of them are prevented by a signed Form I before the Form F.
There is also the compounding cost to consider. An agent who consistently allows split terms to be vague is an agent who consistently earns less than they should — not dramatically, not on any single deal, but systematically, across every shared transaction across their career. If three co-broke deals per year are resolved in the other party’s favour because the documentation was thin, and each concession costs AED 10,000, that is AED 30,000 per year of income that did not need to go anywhere.
Commissions can be negotiated, but the agreement must always be in writing. This applies to agent-to-client agreements. It applies equally to agent-to-agent agreements. The Dubai regulatory framework makes this explicit. The agents who internalise this are the agents who get paid in full, consistently.
The VAT Complication That Catches Agents Mid-Deal
VAT on agency fees adds another layer of complexity to split negotiations that many agents do not account for until the invoice is issued.
Agents registered for VAT — which is required once annual earnings exceed the UAE federal threshold — must add 5% VAT to the commission invoice. This means the gross commission the client pays is not the same number as the net split between agencies. When two agencies are dividing a commission, the question of who issues which VAT invoice to the client — and how the split is structured between the agencies themselves — needs to be agreed in advance.
The cleanest arrangement is for each agency to invoice its own client for its own portion of the commission directly. The messier arrangement — one agency collecting the full commission and then paying the other — requires the paying agency to issue an internal invoice, creating a receivables situation between businesses. That receivable is another point of friction. Getting paid after transfer, rather than at transfer, is exactly the exposure this article is arguing against.
Agents must issue VAT-compliant invoices. This is non-negotiable. But the structure of who invoices whom can be agreed as part of the split negotiation. Include it in the Form I discussion. Settle it before the Form F is executed.
Off-Plan Deals and the Different Rhythm of Commission Payment
The off-plan market has a different commission flow, and it introduces its own split risks.
In off-plan, the developer pays the brokerage. In off-plan purchases, it is the developer who pays commission. The developer’s sales team handles disbursement to the registered selling agency, and that agency’s internal structure determines what the individual agent receives. The off-plan escrow framework — governed under Law No. 8 of 2007 — exists specifically to protect buyer funds during development, not to govern agent commission. Funds in the developer’s escrow account can only be used for core project expenses such as land payments, construction, consultancy and approved sales and marketing costs. These funds are released in stages once the relevant construction milestones are certified by the escrow account trustee. Agent commission is disbursed by the developer separately, not from the buyer’s escrow deposits.
Where splits become contentious in off-plan is when two agencies are involved in the same unit sale — one sourced the buyer directly, the other has a developer relationship and co-registered the deal. Developers have their own co-broke policies, and they are not uniform. Some developers pay the full commission to the registered agency and leave the inter-agency split entirely to those parties to resolve. Others pay each agency separately if both are registered on the deal.
If the split arrangement between agencies on an off-plan deal has not been agreed in writing before the SPA is signed by the buyer, the same problem applies as in the secondary market: you are negotiating from a weak position, after the money has moved.
The solution is the same: agree the split in writing — whether on Form I or in a written co-broke agreement countersigned by both agency principals — before the buyer signs anything.
The Rental Equivalent: Same Problem, Faster Timeline
Rental deals move faster than sales. An Ejari-registered tenancy can complete in a matter of days once the landlord accepts an offer. That compressed timeline makes the split conversation even more urgent in lettings.
In Dubai rentals, for a residential lease, the tenant conventionally pays 5% of the annual rent as commission, plus 5% VAT on that amount, once at signing. On a shared rental deal — listing agent and tenant’s agent from different agencies — the split from that 5% needs to be agreed before the tenancy contract is finalised and before the Ejari is lodged. Once the commission cheque is collected, recovering your share from an agency that has already banked it is significantly harder than agreeing the split upfront.
Post-dated cheques — which remain common in Dubai rentals as a payment mechanism for rent — are not directly relevant to the commission payment. Commission on a rental is generally collected as a single payment at signing. But the speed of that transaction, and the fact that the commission changes hands alongside lease cheques, means there is almost no time to negotiate the split retrospectively. It needs to be resolved before the tenant and landlord sit down.
In the case of any collaboration between agents, Form I is useful and clearly outlines the split of commission. This happens often in the case of secondary market properties where there are buyers’ and sellers’ agents. The purpose of Form I is to safeguard the rights of the agent, their listings, and their clients. The same logic applies in rentals. The form is the same. The timing principle is the same.
The Behaviour That Actually Prevents Disputes
Knowing the rules is necessary. Applying them under deal pressure is the harder part. Here is what the agents who consistently get paid without drama actually do differently:
They treat the split conversation as part of onboarding the collaboration, not as a negotiation to have once the deal is warm. The moment a second agency becomes involved in a transaction — whether by calling about a listing, by submitting a buyer, or by making a referral — the split terms go on the table immediately.
They make Form I a standard part of their process, not a tool they reach for when they are worried. An agent who only reaches for Form I when something feels wrong has already lost the timing advantage. Form I should be drafted alongside the viewing confirmation, not alongside the dispute.
They confirm who invoices whom and how VAT applies before the deal closes. This is not a legal-department question for most agencies; it is a two-minute conversation that prevents a two-week delay in payment.
They do not conflate the client relationship with the inter-agency relationship. Both need to be managed. Both need documentation. The fact that a buyer trusts you does not mean the selling agency will pay you without a written agreement. These are separate relationships with separate paperwork.
They understand their own licensing position. Upon successful RERA registration, an Office Registration Number (ORN) is issued — a unique identifier for the brokerage that must be displayed on all marketing materials and advertisements. The ORN officially sanctions the company to conduct real estate brokerage activities in Dubai. And any agent joining a firm must have successfully completed the DREI training and passed the RERA exam, and upon joining, applies for a Real Estate Broker Card, which contains their unique Broker Registration Number (BRN). A co-broke deal between unlicensed parties, or where one party’s credentials cannot be verified, is an unenforceable deal for commission purposes. Always confirm the other agent’s BRN through the DLD’s official channels before proceeding.
The Principle That Closes the Gap
Every commission dispute in Dubai’s real estate market has something in common: the split terms were either never agreed, agreed verbally, or agreed late — after the deal had momentum and the leverage was asymmetric. The agent who controlled the client relationship, the cheque, or the paperwork held the cards. The other agent waited.
The opposite of this is a transaction where both parties agree the split before the first viewing, sign Form I before the Form F, and structure the invoicing so that each agency is paid directly and simultaneously at the moment the client’s commission obligation is met. There is nothing to dispute. There is no waiting. There is no awkward chase. Each agent closes the file the same day the transfer or lease signing completes.
That outcome — agreed in writing, signed upfront, paid at once — is not aspirational. It is achievable on every shared deal, with every collaborating agency, starting with the next phone call you receive about a listing. The only thing standing between a Dubai agent and that outcome is the habit of delaying the split conversation until it is inconvenient to have it.
Start it earlier. Write it down. Sign the form. Get paid.
