The deal that everyone understood — until the cheque arrived
Picture this: a listing agent in JVC gets a call from a buyer’s agent at a different brokerage. They talk through the unit, agree verbally on a 50/50 commission split, and both get to work. The buyer’s agent brings the client in, the offer gets negotiated, Form F is signed, and the seller hands over two cheques — one for the deposit, one for commission. The cheque goes to the listing agency. Now comes the call no one wants to make: “When are you sending my half?”
That question, asked after the deal has closed, is where things fall apart. Not because either agent is dishonest. Not because the brokerage is the problem. But because the split was never written down and signed at the point when it would have been easy, frictionless, and binding. Everything that follows — the delays, the renegotiation, the awkward messages — flows from that one omission.
Dubai agents know how to close. Most of them are less disciplined about proving what they agreed before they close. That gap is what this article is about.
Why “we both know what we agreed” is never enough
There is a version of this conversation that happens constantly in WhatsApp groups, in car parks outside Emaar sales offices, and over coffee between agents who work well together. It goes: “Send me the buyer, I’ll look after you — we’ll split it.” Both sides nod. Both sides get on with it.
Under UAE law, verbal contracts are in principle binding and enforceable, and the degree of enforceability depends on the intention and actions of the parties. So the myth that a verbal commission split is legally meaningless is not quite accurate. The harder truth is what happens when things get contested. One of the key complications of a verbal arrangement is enforceability — while courts can draw on the fundamental provisions to enforce a contract, it becomes very difficult when the case comes down to “he said, she said.”
Everything should be in writing on the appropriate RERA form. A verbal agreement that commission will be a certain percentage holds very little weight if a dispute arises, and disputes over commission are not uncommon in a market where transaction values are high.
That last point deserves emphasis. Dubai real estate transactions are high-value. A 2% commission on a modest AED 1.5 million apartment is AED 30,000. Split that 50/50 and each agency is owed AED 15,000 — and that is before VAT is calculated on top. At those numbers, disputes do not stay friendly for long.
What the forms are actually for — and why agents skip them
Dubai’s regulatory framework has thought about this problem. When a seller’s listing agent and a buyer’s agent collaborate on a property, they are required to sign Form I — an agreement between RERA-certified agents that protects brokers’ clients and listings and explicitly states the commission split, binding the two agents in a professional relationship.
Form I comes into play when two RERA-certified agents — one representing the seller, the other the buyer — decide to collaborate. The form is designed to safeguard the clients and listings of both agents and explicitly outlines the commission split between them, solidifying a professional commitment between the collaborating agents.
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.
Form F, the MOU between buyer and seller, also has a commission dimension. Form F lists the terms and conditions, rate, and commission split for the buyer’s and seller’s agents, along with other vital details of the property. Form F becomes a valid contract only after it has been signed by both the seller and the buyer, witnessed, and dated by the agent as per RERA regulations.
So the framework exists. The question is why agents don’t consistently use it.
The honest answer is speed and relationship. When two agents who know each other are moving fast on a hot unit — especially in a shared-listing environment where there is no exclusive mandate and the listing could disappear to another buyer tomorrow — stopping to sign paperwork feels like friction that slows the deal down. The implicit logic is: we’re both professionals, we both know what we agreed, the form is a formality.
That logic fails at exactly the moment it matters most: when one party has the money and the other is waiting for it.
Before a buyer’s agent can arrange viewings, share property details, or participate in negotiations, both agents are required to sign Form I. This protects the listing agent’s client relationship, ensures the buyer’s agent receives their agreed share of commission, and prevents disputes about who facilitated the sale.
The form is not a formality. It is the only document that converts a professional understanding into an enforceable written commitment.
The mechanics of how disputes actually start
Commission disputes between agents rarely begin with bad faith. They begin with ambiguity, and ambiguity is the natural consequence of informal agreement.
Here is the anatomy of a typical disagreement:
The split percentage was never pinned down precisely. “We’ll split it” does not specify 50/50. It does not address whether the split is of the gross commission or the net after the listing agency’s internal cut. It does not address what happens if the client negotiates the commission down at the last minute, as buyers in Dubai’s resale market often do.
The VAT treatment was never discussed. Agents registered for VAT — which is required once annual earnings exceed the UAE federal threshold — must add 5% VAT to the commission invoice. If Agency A collects a commission cheque inclusive of VAT and Agency B expects 50% of the gross figure on the cheque, there is an immediate disagreement about whether the split is calculated before or after VAT. Neither agency is wrong; they simply never agreed on it.
Payment timing was assumed, not stated. In a resale deal, the commission cheque usually comes from the buyer at or around transfer. In an off-plan deal, buyers usually pay nothing — the developer pays the agent’s commission directly. That developer commission may be paid in instalments tied to a payment plan or construction milestones, not in a single lump sum at booking. If the co-broke arrangement was agreed informally, the buyer’s agent may expect to be paid at booking while the listing agency is waiting for the developer’s cheque — which may not arrive for months. No one agreed on timing. No one is wrong. But only one of them has money right now.
Proof of introduction gets contested. Commission disputes are fact-specific — who introduced whom, what was signed, what was paid. In a shared-listing environment — where the same property may appear on Bayut and Property Finder under multiple agencies, each holding a Trakheesi permit — it is entirely possible for a buyer to have viewed the property through one agent and transacted through another. Without a signed Form I establishing which agent introduced the buyer, both can claim the commission and neither has documentary proof. Without Form I, a buyer’s agent cannot legally represent their client’s interests when viewing or negotiating for a property listed by another brokerage.
The WhatsApp thread is not your evidence — until it is, partially, uncomfortably
When formal documentation is absent, agents reach for their phones. The WhatsApp thread becomes the evidence. And to be fair, emails, WhatsApp messages, invoices, payment records, and witness evidence may help prove an agreement and breach.
But “may help prove” is not the same as “will establish your entitlement.” A WhatsApp thread showing “we’ll do 50/50 on this one” is ambiguous evidence. It does not specify the property reference number. It does not specify whether that is 50% of gross or net. It does not state the payment trigger. It does not identify the brokerage names in full. In a dispute heard through DLD’s complaint channels, that thread gives you something to stand on — but it is a much weaker position than a signed Form I with both RERA registration numbers on it.
Some verbal agreements may be enforceable, but written evidence is usually much stronger. The problem is that agents only discover how much stronger after the dispute is already live.
There is another practical issue with relying on WhatsApp as your proof: the person you made the deal with may no longer be at that brokerage by the time you chase payment. Dubai has high agent turnover. The individual agent who agreed the split may have moved to a different firm. The brokerage itself may dispute what their former agent agreed. Most disputes with real estate agents arise from situations such as breach of agreement or commission-related misunderstandings. When the agent who made the agreement is gone, the misunderstanding becomes institutional.
The Ejari and rental dimension
Sales deals are not the only context where informal splits create problems. Rental co-brokes carry the same risks in a slightly different shape.
In a rental transaction, the tenant customarily pays the commission — typically around 5% of the annual rent — and often provides it by cheque alongside the post-dated rent cheques at tenancy signing. In rental transactions, it’s usually the tenant who pays 5% of the annual rent to the broker, and this payment is due once the lease agreement is signed.
Where a listing agent and a buyer’s agent have co-broke a rental — one holding the landlord’s listing, the other bringing the tenant — the commission cheque often goes to whichever agency is present at signing. If the split was agreed informally, the agency holding the cheque now has a choice: honour the verbal agreement and transfer the other party’s portion, or find reasons to revisit what was agreed. This is not an accusation; it is simply the structural incentive that informal agreements create.
Ejari registration is mandatory for rental contracts to have legal standing in Dubai. A tenancy contract without Ejari registration has no legal standing in Dubai. Yet the commission arrangement between the two co-broke agents sits entirely outside the Ejari contract — that document governs the landlord-tenant relationship, not the agent-to-agent split. So the rental deal can be fully registered, perfectly compliant, and the two agents can still be in an undocumented split arrangement with no paper trail.
The fix for rental co-brokes is the same as for sales: Form I, signed before the client transacts.
The three moments when agents tell themselves the form can wait
Understanding why agents default to informal arrangements is not about assigning blame. It is about identifying the three specific moments where the informal path feels reasonable and the formal path gets skipped — because those are the moments to change.
Moment one: The first call
An agent with a live buyer calls a listing agent they have worked with before. There is a unit. There is a client. The conversation is warm and moves fast. Agreeing the split verbally at this point feels natural, because both agents know that Form I needs to happen before viewings — but they tell themselves it can be sorted “when we send the client details over.” Then the client details get sent. Then the viewing happens. Then the offer goes in. And the form still has not been signed because the deal was moving and no one stopped to do it.
The fix is simple: the form is a condition of the viewing. No signed Form I, no viewing. This is not aggressive; it is actually what the RERA framework intends.
Moment two: The offer stage
This is the second window where agents routinely tell themselves it is fine. “We have a verbal agreement, we’re almost at Form F, let’s get the offer in first.” The problem is that Form F — the formal agreement between buyer and seller detailing price, deposit, payment schedule, handover date, commission to be paid to the agents, and conditions — records the commission amount but does not automatically resolve which agency gets which portion of it. Once Form F is signed and the client is committed, the leverage to formalise the inter-agent split has not increased; if anything, it has decreased, because both agencies know the deal will close regardless of whether they resolve the split arrangement.
Moment three: After transfer
The worst moment. The deal is done, the transfer is registered at the DLD trustee office, the commission cheque has been issued. Now the co-broke agent asks for their portion and the conversation suddenly becomes complicated. Every concession extracted at this stage is extracted from a position of weakness. The money exists. The other party has it. The proof of what was agreed is a WhatsApp message that says “we’ll split it.” Having a written agreement is essential to win any dispute. At this point, the written agreement that would have taken five minutes to produce at the start has become the thing that would have changed everything.
What “paid at once” actually means and why it matters
The deeper structural problem with agent-to-agent splits in Dubai is not just that the agreement is informal — it is that payment flows sequentially. The client pays the listing agency. The listing agency then owes the co-broke agent their portion. This creates a second transaction that exists entirely outside the client’s awareness and is governed only by whatever trust exists between the two agencies.
Sequential payment creates delay by design. It also creates a period during which one agency holds the full commission and the other is waiting. In that window, every dispute that was going to happen, happens.
The principle that removes this friction is straightforward: the split is agreed and signed before the client pays, and every party who is owed money receives it at the same moment the client releases it. Not “shortly after.” Not “once we process it.” At the same moment.
When multiple agents are involved in a single listing, the commission is typically split among them — and this can sometimes complicate the transaction, so clear agreements should be in place from the start.
“From the start” is the operative phrase. The split agreement is not paperwork that follows the deal. It is a precondition of the deal proceeding. When multiple agents are involved in the same listing, commissions are split according to signed RERA forms — and this ensures transparency and avoids disputes.
Signed before the client pays. Every party paid at once. These two principles, applied consistently, eliminate the category of dispute this article is about. Not reduce — eliminate. There is no window for renegotiation if the agreement is already signed. There is no delay if payment is simultaneous. There is no WhatsApp thread to excavate if the Form I is on file with both agencies’ RERA numbers on it.
The cost of informality, calculated honestly
Agents who work in Dubai long enough accumulate a mental ledger of deals where they got paid less than they were owed — or paid late, or paid only after applying pressure, or not paid at all. Most of those entries in the ledger trace back to the same root cause: the split was informal, and when the money arrived, the informal agreement was revisited.
Every split should be spelled out in writing to avoid disputes. This is not a counsel of pessimism about colleagues or the market. It is a recognition that written agreements protect both parties equally. The listing agent who signs Form I is protected from a co-broke agent who later claims a larger portion than what was agreed. The buyer’s agent who insists on Form I is protected from being told, post-transfer, that the payment is being “processed” indefinitely.
Commission agreements between agents are governed by RERA Form I, which must be formally signed before any commission is disbursed — a requirement that prevents the informal arrangements that create disputes and gives both parties a documented, enforceable position.
“Enforceable position” is the goal. Not leverage over a colleague. Not distrust of an agency. An enforceable position means that if something goes wrong — if a brokerage changes its mind, if an agent leaves the firm, if a developer delays payment, if a client renegotiates at the last moment — there is a document that says what was agreed, by whom, and on what basis. That document is the difference between a professional disagreement that gets resolved quickly and one that takes months, involves RERA complaints, and poisons a business relationship.
The standard worth holding
The Dubai real estate market’s regulatory architecture — RERA, DLD, Trakheesi, the RERA forms framework — is designed precisely so that agents do not have to rely on trust alone. The forms exist. The process exists. By having a signed Form I, both agents are legally bound to cooperate in the best interest of their clients, preventing potential poaching of clients or disputes over fees.
The standard worth holding is this: every split is agreed and signed before the first viewing. Every party’s entitlement is documented. And when the client pays, the money moves to every party it is owed to at the same time — not in a sequence that creates a creditor and a debtor out of two agents who were supposed to be collaborating.
Informality is not efficient. It feels efficient at the start, because it removes a five-minute step. It costs those five minutes back, multiplied by hours of chasing, negotiation, and anxiety, when the money arrives and the agreement turns out to mean different things to different people.
The agents who consistently get paid — on time, in full, without drama — are not the ones with the best relationships. They are the ones who formalised the agreement before the relationship was tested by money. That is the habit worth building.
