The deal closes. Then the wait begins.
Picture the scene. You’ve spent three weekends taking a buyer through launches, sending Mashrooi progress screenshots at midnight, and explaining the Oqood registration process to a client who keeps confusing it with the DLD transfer fee. The SPA gets signed. The developer’s sales coordinator sends a congratulations email. The booking cheque clears into the project’s regulated escrow account.
And then nothing. Your commission sits somewhere between “agreed in principle” and “on its way” — which, in Dubai’s off-plan market, can mean very different things to the developer’s finance team, to your brokerage, and to the co-broking agency on the other side of the deal.
Most agents treat the commission conversation as something that happens after the sale. That’s the first mistake. Off-plan commission structures in Dubai are more layered than most agents acknowledge, and the gap between “earning” a commission and actually receiving it — cleanly, in full, without a chase — comes down almost entirely to what was agreed, documented, and signed before the booking payment was made.
This article breaks down the full chain: how developers pay, how splits work between agencies, where the money stops moving and why, and what a properly documented deal looks like versus the kind of deal that generates a WhatsApp argument six months later.
What the developer actually owes you — and when
The foundational difference between off-plan and secondary market commission is who writes the cheque. When a buyer purchases off-plan through an agent, they typically pay zero commission. The developer pays the agent directly — usually between 2% and 7% of the unit price, depending on the project, the developer’s relationship with the brokerage, and current market conditions.
That range matters. There is no RERA-set “standard” commission for off-plan. Fees are by agreement and must be documented in the developer–broker marketing/allocation agreement and Form A. In practice, off-plan commissions often fall in the 2–8% range, but you should always quote the contracted figure — never a rule of thumb.
What does that mean in practice? It means that the headline rate you’ve been told at a developer’s broker event, the number printed on a project brochure, or the figure a developer’s sales manager mentioned over lunch is not your commission. Your commission is what appears in a signed agreement between your brokerage and the developer. If that document doesn’t exist or hasn’t been read carefully, you do not yet have a commission agreement — you have a conversation.
The second thing most agents miss is the timing of payment. Developers structure their commission releases in ways that mirror the buyer’s payment plan, but they are not obligated to pay you at booking unless that’s what the agreement says. A developer paying 4% commission might release 2% on SPA signature and 2% on handover. Or 50% at Oqood registration and 50% at construction completion. Or the full amount at a specific construction milestone. Construction-linked plans trigger payments only when the developer reaches defined, independently verified milestones — foundation, superstructure, MEP completion, handover — so delays defer payment.
This is the first place agents underestimate the timeline. A commission “agreed” on a project with a 36-month build period and a handover-linked payment tail is not money you will see for three years on part of it. Construction delays are common in Dubai’s off-plan market. A project promised in 36 months might take 42 or 48 months. Your payment plan should accommodate this reality. Your commission payment plan, too.
The regulated escrow account and what it means for your money
It is worth being clear about what the escrow account actually is, because it gets conflated with things it isn’t. Under Dubai Law No. 8 of 2007, all buyer payments for off-plan properties must be held in a RERA-registered escrow account controlled by a licensed escrow agent, not by the developer directly.
This law requires developers to open a dedicated, project-specific escrow account with a DLD-approved bank, deposit all buyer payments into that account, and withdraw funds only in stages linked to verified construction milestones.
The buyer’s money is protected by this structure. Your commission is not inside the regulated escrow account — that account holds the buyer’s purchase instalments and is strictly governed. The drawdown sequence typically follows foundation completion, structural completion of each floor or phase, mechanical and electrical installation, finishing works, and handover. At each stage, the escrow agent requires a completion certificate from the independent engineer and RERA approval before releasing funds. This prevents developers from accessing the full pool of buyer capital before the corresponding work is done.
The developer pays your commission from their own cash flow — funded progressively as the regulated escrow account releases instalments to them. Which means a cash-flow-constrained developer on a slow-moving project is a developer whose commission payments to brokerages follow the same slow rhythm. Know the developer’s track record. Know when the commission is contractually due. Do not assume “the project sold out” means your cheque is imminent.
How co-broking splits actually get made — and disputed
Off-plan in Dubai runs largely without exclusive mandates. 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.
That last sentence is doing a lot of work. “Clear agreements from the start” sounds obvious, but in the heat of a launch weekend — when a hot project is releasing units by ballot and your buyer is texting from an airport — the formality of documenting the split falls away. One agency holds the developer relationship. Another brings the buyer. The developer pays one brokerage. That brokerage is supposed to pass through a portion to the other. The question of how much, when, and to whom is often left as a “we’ll sort it out” conversation.
When two agents work together on one deal — one representing the buyer, the other listing the property — Dubai requires them to use a Form I, the Agent-to-Agent Agreement. This form ensures both agents get their fair share of the commission.
Form I is not optional. 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.
The problem is that Form I describes the relationship between brokerages, not individual agents. What the document captures is the brokerage-to-brokerage split. The internal split — what the agent inside the receiving brokerage actually takes home — is a separate matter governed by that agent’s employment or freelance arrangement with their own agency. Agents do not keep the full commission themselves. Usually, they split it with their brokerage agency, typically 50/50, but the split can vary depending on company policies. Top-performing agents may get a larger share, while those with salaries might receive less than 50%.
So there are at least two splits happening on any co-broke off-plan deal: the split between the two brokerages, and the split within each brokerage between the agency and its agent. Every one of those splits is a potential dispute if it hasn’t been written down and agreed before the client pays.
The 70/30 question
Most Dubai brokerages use a 70/30 split when one agent supplies the buyer and another lists the property. The referring agent receives 30% of the total commission.
That figure is often cited as the market norm, but it is a norm, not a rule. The actual split is whatever is in the signed agreement. Nothing stops two brokerages from agreeing 60/40 or 50/50, provided it is documented. What does have a regulatory dimension is the referral cap: RERA caps the referral share at 30% of the brokerage commission. Anything higher requires a separate tri-party agreement between the two brokerages and the client, filed with the Dubai Land Department within 48 hours of signing.
Agents regularly agree to referral arrangements that exceed 30% without the accompanying documentation, which exposes both parties if the deal later becomes a dispute. The DLD can and does scrutinise commission arrangements, particularly in high-value transactions. The payment is processed through the brokerage accounts; direct cash transfers between agents violate MOHRE rules and can lead to licence suspension.
There is also a disclosure obligation most agents underweight. In large or complex deals, the commission split between agencies can be negotiated between brokerages before the deal closes — and agents are required under RERA rules to disclose their commission arrangement to all parties. That disclosure requirement applies to the client, not just to the other brokerage. If you are receiving a commission from the developer while representing the buyer, the buyer should know about it.
Where off-plan commission disputes actually start
Disputes in off-plan commission are almost always traceable to one of four root causes. None of them are complicated. All of them are preventable.
The “we agreed verbally” problem. A developer’s sales manager confirms a rate by WhatsApp. An agent from another brokerage sends a text saying “let’s split it 60/40.” The client signs the SPA. The project completes. Now the developer’s finance team is looking at a signed marketing agreement that says 4%, not the 5% the sales manager mentioned at the rooftop launch event. The other brokerage is quoting the WhatsApp message. Nobody has a Form I. Nobody wins quickly.
The payment trigger is ambiguous. The developer–broker agreement says commission is payable on “completion of sale.” Does that mean SPA signature? Oqood registration? First instalment paid? Handover? In a secondary market deal, most agents consider commission earned when the buyer and seller sign the MOU — Form F — and this is supported by RERA in disputes. Off-plan has no MOU equivalent. The SPA is the contract, and if the SPA doesn’t specify the commission release trigger, you are relying on the developer’s interpretation of their own agreement.
The split wasn’t signed before the money moved. This is the most common and most expensive mistake. Two agencies verbally agree to split a developer’s commission on a joint deal. The developer pays the listing brokerage in full. The listing brokerage’s accounts team files it as their revenue. The buyer’s agent’s brokerage sends a follow-up email. Then another. Then a legal notice. The money has already been absorbed into the listing brokerage’s cash flow, not because anyone intended to steal it, but because there was no signed instruction telling the developer to pay the two agencies separately, or telling the listing agency’s accounts team how to route the split payment.
The VAT treatment is unresolved. Brokerage fees in the UAE are subject to 5% VAT, making it important to clarify if your agent’s quote is VAT-inclusive. In a co-broke arrangement, both brokerages are VAT-registered entities. The question of whether the commission figure in the split agreement is inclusive or exclusive of VAT, and who issues the tax invoice to the developer, is a detail that becomes a disagreement once real money is on the table.
The co-broke playbook that actually works
Getting off-plan commission right is not complicated. What it requires is discipline before the deal moves, not paperwork scrambled after the fact.
Step one: establish your position in the deal before the client meets the developer. This means your brokerage has either a signed developer marketing agreement or a written co-broking agreement with the brokerage that holds one. If neither exists at the point of first showing, you are working on trust — which is fine with people you trust, and catastrophic with those you’ve never worked with before.
Step two: confirm the commission rate and the payment trigger in writing. Fees must be documented in the developer–broker marketing/allocation agreement and Form A. Read what the agreement actually says about when payment is released. Ask explicitly if any portion is held to handover. If the developer’s agreement has a milestone-linked commission tail, that needs to be reflected in your brokerage’s internal agreement with the agent so no one is surprised by a three-year wait on part of their earnings.
Step three: sign Form I before the SPA, not after. Form I must be formally signed before any commission is disbursed. Signing it before the developer receives the booking is cleaner still — it removes any ambiguity about whether the co-broke arrangement was established before or after the transaction completed. Some brokerages resist this because it feels premature. That resistance is backwards. A pre-deal Form I is the document that prevents the post-deal argument.
Step four: specify the split percentage net or gross of VAT, and agree which entity issues the tax invoice to the developer. This is a two-minute conversation that eliminates a two-month accounts dispute.
Step five: instruct the developer on payment routing at the time of SPA. If the developer’s standard process is to pay one brokerage and expect that brokerage to pass through the referring agency’s portion, that creates a cash-flow dependency and a potential dispute. A cleaner instruction — in writing, copied to both brokerage heads — asks the developer to pay each brokerage’s share directly, or at minimum confirms in writing what the receiving brokerage is obligated to pass through and when.
The internal split problem nobody talks about
Even when the brokerage-to-brokerage arrangement is clean, the agent inside the brokerage often has the least documented position of anyone in the chain. The Form I protects the brokerages. The developer–broker agreement protects the brokerages. The RERA framework protects the brokerages and the client.
What protects the individual agent? Their employment contract or freelance agreement with their own brokerage — and specifically, whether that document addresses off-plan commission, payment timing from the developer, and what happens if the developer pays in tranches over three years.
This gap matters most in two scenarios. First, when an agent moves between brokerages mid-project. The developer will pay the brokerage, not the agent. If the deal was done under the previous employment, whether the commission follows the agent or stays with the agency depends entirely on what their contract said — and most don’t address this specifically. Second, when the developer’s commission release is milestone-linked and the agent’s internal agreement says they are paid when commission is received. If the developer holds 50% to handover and handover slips by 18 months, the agent’s payout slips too, often with no written acknowledgement that this was always the arrangement.
The principle is consistent with everything else in this chain: the time to document the internal split, including its timing and its relationship to the developer’s payment schedule, is before the SPA, not after the commission cheque arrives.
Assignment deals and the commission complication they add
Off-plan resales — assignments before handover — introduce a further layer that many agents handle carelessly. Off-plan properties in Dubai can be resold in the secondary market once at least 40% of the payment plan has been paid. The developer issues an NOC to facilitate the assignment.
An assignment is not a primary sale. The exception to the developer paying commission is a secondary sale of an off-plan unit, an assignment or resale before handover, where the buyer may still pay the standard 2%. This means the commission source shifts from the developer to the buyer, the transaction looks more like a secondary market deal, and the relevant documentation — Form A for the seller, Form B for the buyer, and Form I if two brokerages are involved — needs to reflect that shift.
Agents who handle a lot of primary off-plan deals sometimes apply their developer-paid commission assumptions to assignment deals and create a mess. The seller believes they are not paying commission. The buyer believes the developer is paying. Neither is correct. The agreed commission needs to be documented with both parties at the outset, with Form F (the MOU equivalent for the assignment agreement) capturing the full picture before anything is signed.
When payment stalls: the practical steps
Despite best preparation, commission payments on off-plan deals do sometimes stall. Developers with cash-flow pressure pay brokerages late. Receiving brokerages in a co-broke hold onto the other agency’s portion past any reasonable point. Internal agency accounting creates delays between when the brokerage receives commission and when the agent is credited.
If an agent has legitimate grounds to pursue payment, RERA provides formal channels for resolving commission disputes with registered agents. An agent may file a complaint with RERA or pursue payment through the courts. If you have legitimate grounds to dispute the commission, address these through proper channels rather than simply refusing to engage.
The practical reality is that a RERA dispute process takes time, and commission disputes rarely rise to the level of urgency that legal proceedings require. The more effective position is to never need formal dispute resolution — because the documentation from step one through step five was complete before the client paid anything.
The agents who get paid fastest on off-plan deals are not necessarily the ones with the best developer relationships or the highest transaction volumes. They are the ones whose paperwork is airtight before the booking hits, whose Form I was signed last week not next month, and whose developer agreement specifies a payment date rather than a payment event that can be interpreted five different ways.
The principle the paperwork is protecting
There is a simple logic underneath all of this, and it is worth stating plainly.
In every off-plan deal involving more than one agent or agency, there is a moment where money moves from the developer to a single point — usually the listing brokerage — and then is supposed to move onward to other parties according to an agreed arrangement. That single-point collection, followed by onward distribution, is where every significant commission dispute in co-broke off-plan deals originates. Not because the people involved are dishonest, but because the distribution instruction was never formally recorded, the timing was never agreed, and the VAT was never clarified.
The mechanics that remove this friction are not sophisticated. They are a signed split agreement between brokerages, executed before the client pays. A developer payment instruction that reflects the split. A clear timeline for when each party receives their portion. Every agent paid from the same transaction at the same time, without one party acting as a relay for another’s money.
When that sequence is followed, commission disputes on off-plan deals largely disappear. Not because the deals become simpler — off-plan commissions with milestone-linked tails, VAT obligations, internal brokerage splits, and assignment-layer complications are genuinely complex. But because complexity and ambiguity are different things. Complexity can be managed. Ambiguity is where the money gets stuck.
Sign the split before the client signs anything. Specify the trigger, the amount, the VAT treatment, and the timing. Then the only thing left to track is the construction milestone — and that, at least, has an independent engineer verifying it.
