The situation every Dubai agent recognises
Two agents sit across from each other in a developer’s sales office. One brought the buyer from a WhatsApp group lead. The other was already registered with the developer’s sales team and handled every viewing, the site visit, and the SPA paperwork. The developer pays commission to the registered brokerage. The buyer has signed. The deal is done.
And then nothing moves.
The registered agency says the referring agent’s cut was “verbal — we’ll sort it once we receive.” The referring agent says they agreed on a fifty-fifty split the week before launch. Nobody put it in writing. The developer has already transferred the full commission to one brokerage’s account. The money is spent. One agent is now either chasing WhatsApp messages or filing paperwork with the DLD — on a deal they helped close months ago.
This scene, or one very close to it, plays out constantly across Dubai’s off-plan market. It is not caused by dishonest agents. It is caused by the specific structural features of off-plan transactions that make disputes easy to fall into and hard to escape. Understanding which deal types produce the most friction — and exactly why — is the beginning of getting paid cleanly.
Why off-plan is structurally different from resale
In a secondary-market sale, the commission chain is relatively visible. Sellers pay a commission that is reflected in the agreement they have with the agency — typically Form A. A buyer has a broker, a seller has a broker, and at the point of the Form F (MOU), both sides know who is paying whom. The money flows at transfer, both agents are usually present, and the split has been written down somewhere, even if imperfectly.
Off-plan is built differently. For off-plan sales, the commission is paid by the developer of the project, and the commission percentage can vary from developer to developer and from project to project. The buyer pays nothing to the broker. The developer compensates the agent directly, allowing buyers to invest without incurring agency fees.
That sounds clean. In practice, it creates three specific problems.
First, the commission rate itself is not standardised. For off-plan properties, the commission may vary depending on the project, developer, and brokerage agreement — typically ranging between 2% and 8%. A referring agent who assumed a 50/50 split on a 4% commission is working from a very different number than one who was told the project pays 6%, but whose agreement covers only the 4% standard.
Second, payment timing is tied to the developer’s own schedule, not to the deal closing moment. The developer holds the commission, releases it when they choose, and pays it to whichever brokerage is registered in their system. If two agencies co-brokered the deal but only one brokerage is registered with the developer, the second agent receives nothing from the developer directly — they receive it only when the first brokerage decides to forward it. That dependency on goodwill, rather than a binding payment mechanism, is where most disputes are born.
Third, there is no equivalent of the Form F to anchor the inter-agent split. In resale, the MOU at least forces both agencies to confront the split in writing. In off-plan, agents often agree on split terms verbally during the excitement of a launch event and formalise nothing before the buyer signs. By the time the developer pays — which can be weeks or months after the SPA is executed — the deal has gone quiet, people have moved on to other projects, and the verbal agreement is now a memory test between two people with competing recollections.
The five deal types where disputes concentrate
Not all off-plan deals are equally risky. The friction tends to cluster in identifiable structures.
1. Referred buyers at developer launches
Launch events are the most dispute-prone environment in Dubai real estate. Agents bring buyers on the day, units are booked in hours, and the paperwork follows later. The referring agent registers the buyer’s name on the developer’s system under their brokerage. The listing agent — or the developer’s preferred brokerage — may or may not acknowledge that registration as creating an entitlement to a split.
The problem is not malice. It is that the registration systems used by developers record which brokerage brought the buyer — not the internal agreement between agents. If agent A referred a buyer to agent B’s brokerage, and agent B’s brokerage is registered with the developer, the developer pays agent B’s brokerage the full commission. What portion (if any) agent A receives depends entirely on whatever agent B’s agency agreed to and chooses to honour.
When multiple agents are involved in a single listing, the commission is typically split among them — but this can complicate the transaction, so clear agreements should be in place from the start. At a launch, “from the start” is the hour before booking, not a week later.
2. Co-broking with no written split agreement
In negotiated splits on large or complex deals, the commission split between agencies can be negotiated between brokerages before the deal closes. The operative phrase is before the deal closes. When agents agree a split after the buyer has signed, and before the developer has paid, they are negotiating from misaligned positions: the developer-side agent has already received confirmation of the commission, and the co-broker has no leverage left.
If several agents share work on one property, the total commission is split between them according to agreed roles from the start. Clear terms prevent disputes. What “agreed from the start” means in practice is a signed document, not a phone call. Co-broker splits on off-plan deals are frequently agreed in messages that contain amounts but no signatures, timelines, or consequences for non-payment. That document will not hold up if the other party later disputes the amount or the timing.
3. Sub-agency and referral arrangements
A referring agent passes a client to a listing agent and receives a referral fee, usually 25% to 50% of the total commission. When that referral fee covers an off-plan deal, the timing mismatch becomes acute. The referring agent did their work months ago — they introduced the client, provided qualifying information, and moved on. The listing agent handled the sale. The developer pays the listing brokerage, which then owes the referral fee to the original agent’s brokerage.
Only agents holding a valid RERA broker card can receive referral fees. The fee must appear in the brokerage agreement signed with the client before any property viewing. In practice, many referral agreements are struck between agents directly rather than between brokerages formally, which creates a chain where the entitlement is real but the enforcement mechanism is weak.
The dispute structure here is almost always the same: the referring agent claims the agreed amount; the listing agent’s brokerage claims the project paid less than expected, or that the payment is pending, or that the split was misunderstood. The referring agent has no visibility into what the developer actually paid, no access to the commission confirmation, and no direct relationship with the developer to verify anything.
4. Off-plan resales of units already under construction
While developers pay the agent commission on off-plan properties, secondary resales of off-plan units require the buyer to pay 2% commission to the broker managing the resale. This is the zone between pure off-plan and pure secondary market — and it is a significant source of confusion.
When an investor who bought off-plan during construction wants to assign their Oqood-registered contract to a new buyer before completion, the transaction is a resale of an off-plan unit, not an off-plan sale from the developer. The commission structure changes. The developer is not the payer. The original buyer/seller is. The agents involved need to establish — in writing, before the deal proceeds — exactly who is paying what, because the assumption that “the developer pays, so it is an off-plan deal” is wrong once the unit is being sold investor-to-investor.
Agents who operate across both market types sometimes apply off-plan commission assumptions to what is actually a secondary transaction, and vice versa. Neither party has thought it through before the client signs, and the dispute emerges at payment.
5. Deals where the developer’s payment is tied to construction milestones
Under Law No. 8 of 2007, every buyer instalment must be paid into a project-specific escrow account held by a RERA/DLD-approved bank. Those installments are released to the developer as construction milestones are verified. In some developer commission structures, agent commission is similarly staggered — part on booking, part on SPA, part on handover or key milestone.
When the commission itself is milestone-linked, the inter-agent split becomes a multi-event problem. The referring agent agreed a 50% split. The first tranche is paid by the developer. The listing brokerage forwards half. But then the project stalls. The second tranche of developer commission is delayed by months. The referring agent follows up. The listing brokerage says they are waiting too. The referring agent has no way of knowing if that is true.
This is structurally different from a resale deal where the commission is paid once at transfer. Off-plan commission can be stretched across years of construction. Every deferred milestone is a new opportunity for a dispute to re-emerge between agents who had already, in their own minds, resolved the split question.
Where the money actually sits — and why that matters
As per Law 8/2007, off-plan property payments must be made through RERA-approved escrow accounts, having withdrawals linked to the stage of construction. This is the legal mechanism protecting the buyer’s instalments during the build. It is important to be precise about this: the escrow account holds buyer payments, not agent commissions. The commission is a separate matter entirely, paid by the developer from their own operational funds once a unit is booked and the SPA is registered.
When a buyer signs an off-plan sale purchase agreement (SPA), the transaction must be registered through the Oqood system managed by the DLD. Oqood registration is the moment the deal is formally on the books. Many developers use the Oqood registration event as the trigger for releasing commission. Some pay in tranches. Some have their own internal processing timelines that can run to several weeks.
For agents, the practical consequence is that between the moment the client signs and the moment the commission arrives in the brokerage account, there is a variable gap — and during that gap, the inter-agent split agreement sits entirely on trust. If the trust breaks, there is no formal mechanism that automatically routes the right share to the right party. The agent who is not registered with the developer is dependent on the agent who is.
The Dubai real estate market is structurally complex when it comes to commission management. 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. Every one of those variables creates a point at which an informal split agreement can fail.
What agents try to use as proof — and why it often falls short
When a dispute reaches a formal stage, both agents need to demonstrate that an agreement existed and that it specified the amount and timing. Here is what usually gets presented, and the gaps in each:
WhatsApp and text messages. These are the most common “evidence” in agent commission disputes. They show that a conversation happened. They rarely specify the exact gross commission amount that was agreed as the base, the brokerage-level split versus the agent-level split, the payment trigger, or the consequences of late payment. Courts and RERA can consider them, but an ambiguous message thread rarely resolves a dispute cleanly.
Email chains. Better than messaging apps, but often incomplete. The chain shows intent but rarely constitutes a binding agreement because it lacks signatures from the authorised representatives of both brokerages.
Verbal agreements at launches. These are, for all practical purposes, unenforceable without corroboration. The agent who said “we split fifty-fifty” in a hotel ballroom with music playing has nothing to point to.
The co-broking letter or referral agreement. This is the correct instrument — a signed document between the two brokerages specifying the deal, the client, the project, the gross commission as declared by the developer, the agreed split percentage, the payment trigger event, and the timeline. RERA requires brokers to register, use standardised forms, and clearly document commission agreements. When this document exists, disputes are dramatically shorter because the factual question is already answered. When it does not exist, the dispute is about establishing facts that should never have been in question.
Agents are required under RERA rules to disclose their commission arrangement to all parties. Disclosure is not the same as documentation. Many agents disclose verbally and document nothing.
The VAT dimension agents overlook
VAT applies to brokerage fees in Dubai at the standard 5% rate. When an agent refers a client and receives a referral or co-broking fee from another brokerage, that payment is treated as a business-to-business transaction for VAT purposes. Referral income is treated as brokerage income and is subject to corporate tax for the receiving brokerage. Individual agents receive the net amount after their brokerage deducts the agreed internal split and any applicable VAT.
In practical terms, this means a co-broking agreement should specify whether the agreed split is inclusive or exclusive of VAT, and which brokerage is responsible for issuing the tax invoice. When this is left ambiguous, the dispute about the amount owed frequently becomes a dispute about whether 5% is owed on top or already included. It is a small number on most deals, but it has ended more than a few co-broking relationships when it surfaces after payment.
The post-booking cancellation problem
One scenario that agents treat as an edge case is actually far more common than the market likes to admit: the buyer cancels after booking, or the developer cancels the unit, after the agent has already agreed a split with a co-broker.
The developer will claw back any commission already paid (or simply refuse to pay if the cancellation precedes the commission release). The co-broker split agreement, if it specified a fixed amount, now covers a commission that does not exist. Who owes whom nothing? Who bears the cost of the work already done?
Most co-broking agreements say nothing about cancellation, because they were written in the optimism of a booking, not with the possibility of it unwinding. This is a specific gap that a well-drafted split agreement should close — by specifying that the split applies only to commission actually received by the receiving brokerage, and that both parties bear their own costs if the deal falls away before commission is paid.
How disputes escalate — and where they land
When an agent believes they are owed a commission and cannot collect from the other brokerage, the available routes in Dubai are broadly:
Internal negotiation. Most disputes that resolve without formal action do so in the first few weeks, when both parties still have an ongoing relationship and the reputational cost of a formal complaint is a deterrent. This window closes fast.
RERA complaint. RERA is responsible for licensing agents, registering off-plan escrow accounts, and maintaining the Trakheesi system for all real estate activity. RERA can investigate conduct, impose fines, and can suspend or revoke licenses. An agent who believes they were improperly denied a commission they are entitled to under a documented agreement can raise the matter through RERA. RERA complaints can be filed through the Dubai REST app or the DLD website with no fees, with a response expected within five business days.
Dubai Courts / Dubai International Arbitration Centre. For higher-value disputes, the civil courts are available. If the dispute is more than AED 100,000, a property consultant or a lawyer registered with DLD is typically involved. A court process takes months, costs money, and almost always requires the documentation that the agent did not think they needed when the deal was going smoothly.
The consistent theme across all resolution paths is that agents with clean, signed documentation resolve disputes faster and at lower cost. Agents relying on verbal agreements and message threads spend their time in a fact-finding exercise that the other party has no incentive to support.
The patterns that protect agents who get paid on time
The off-plan agents who move from deal to deal without commission disputes do not share a particular relationship with developers or access to better projects. They share a discipline around documentation that happens before the client signs, not after.
The structure that works looks like this:
- Before the client is introduced to the developer or the other brokerage, both agencies agree the split in a signed co-broking or referral letter. This letter names the project, names the client, states the gross developer commission as declared, states the split percentage, states the payment trigger (typically: within a specified number of days of the receiving brokerage receiving the commission from the developer), and addresses the cancellation scenario.
- The agreement is signed by authorised representatives of both brokerages, not by individual agents acting on their own authority. This matters because the commission is paid at brokerage level, and the person signing on behalf of the brokerage is the one with authority to commit to the payment.
- Both parties retain a copy before the booking is made. Not after. Not during the excitement of the launch. Before the client’s name goes on the developer’s system.
- The gross commission amount is confirmed from the developer in writing before the split is calculated. A 50/50 split on an ambiguous gross is not an agreement — it is two agents agreeing on half of a number they have not established.
When multiple agents are involved in the same listing, off-plan and resale property commissions in Dubai are split between them according to signed RERA forms — which ensures transparency and avoids disputes. The signed form is not bureaucratic excess. It is the mechanism that makes the agreement real.
The principle that removes most of the friction
The disputes described in this article — the launch-day disagreements, the referral fees that never arrive, the milestone-linked commissions that disappear into another brokerage’s accounts — share one feature: the split was treated as a thing to be resolved after the client signed, using goodwill, rather than a thing to be established before the client signed, using paper.
The market in Dubai runs on shared listings, co-broking, and referral pipelines. That is not going to change, and it should not change — the model serves clients well. But the structure of how commission flows in an off-plan deal, where a single developer payment goes to a single registered brokerage, means that every agent who is not that registered brokerage depends entirely on the goodwill and accounting of the one who is.
Goodwill is not a payment mechanism.
The outcome that every agent in a co-brokered off-plan deal should want — and the outcome that removes the argument before it begins — is one where the agreed split is signed before the booking, confirmed against the actual developer commission, and paid at the same moment the receiving brokerage receives it, so that no party is waiting, chasing, or trusting. Payment at the moment of commission receipt, split according to a pre-signed agreement that both brokerages hold: that is the structure that turns a handshake into a closed deal.
The agents who build that discipline into every co-brokered off-plan deal are not being cautious. They are being professional. And they are, consistently, the ones who do not have to choose between chasing what they are owed and moving on to the next deal.
