The moment the deal closes and the clock starts running
Picture a secondary market deal that crossed the finish line this morning. Form F is signed. The buyer handed over the commission cheque at MOU — collected at Form F signing, held as security, cashed only on the day of final transfer at the DLD Trustee Office once the title deed is confirmed. Two agents worked this deal: the listing agent’s agency is on Form A, the buyer’s agent’s agency is on Form B, and all three forms work together as a single contractual framework — Form A records the seller–broker relationship and commission, Form B covers the buyer–broker engagement.
So far, so clean. But the commission cheque was made out to one agency — the listing side — because that is the agency whose banking details went on the paperwork. The buyer’s agent, from a different brokerage, worked the deal for three months. They brought a qualified buyer, negotiated the price, shepherded a finance application, and stood at the DLD counter. Their agency’s share of the commission is sitting inside a cheque they cannot deposit, owed to them by an agency they are not employed by, under a split that was discussed verbally over WhatsApp during a site visit eleven weeks ago.
That gap — between the moment the client pays and the moment the other agency receives its share — is where money leaks. It is also where trust begins to erode.
Why there is no exclusive mandate to fall back on
One of the defining features of Dubai’s secondary market is the absence of exclusive mandates as a legal requirement. For rentals, multiple agents can represent the same listings; for secondary sales, a maximum of three agents can represent a single property. In practice, this means the same unit appears on portals under three different ORNs, each agent convinced their buyer is the one who will close, and no single agency controlling the deal end to end.
When there is no exclusivity, there is no natural answer to the question: “Whose commission cheque is this?” The client pays once, usually to the agent standing in front of them at signing. What happens next — how that money reaches everyone who earned a portion of it — is entirely a matter of internal agreement between the agencies involved. RERA sets the framework for broker licensing and disclosure obligations; agents are required under RERA rules to disclose their commission arrangement to all parties. But the mechanics of agency-to-agency settlement are left to the agents themselves. There is no regulatory queue, no DLD instruction telling agency B to wire agency A’s share by a certain date. That is a private arrangement between businesses, and private arrangements fail when they are informal.
The four stages where the split goes wrong
Stage one: The verbal agreement
When two brokers collaborate on a deal, the commission structure must be agreed upon in advance. Without a clear agent-to-agent agreement, many agents end up in costly disputes or losing their commission entirely.
In reality, the split conversation often happens at the wrong moment — during a viewing, or after an offer has been accepted, when both agents are focused on deal momentum rather than legal hygiene. One agent assumes a 50/50 split because that is the market norm. In Dubai, there is no official law dictating the exact split for agent-to-agent commissions, but a 50/50 split of the total commission is commonly accepted for sale transactions. The other agent, aware the listing side is doing the developer NOC chase and service charge clearance, thinks 60/40 in their favour is reasonable. Neither position is wrong. Both are unrecorded.
Relying on verbal agreements, not discussing commission splits until late in the process, assuming a 50/50 split without confirmation, and working with agents who refuse to sign a formal agreement are among the most common mistakes in agent-to-agent Dubai deals.
Stage two: The wrong document — or no document at all
RERA forms have legal enforceability — especially in a dispute, when a transaction is documented using the appropriate RERA form, the agreement becomes enforceable under UAE law. Form F captures what the client pays and to whom. The Dubai Land Department Form F covers property and financial details and the commission to be paid to the seller’s and buyer’s agents. But Form F is a buyer–seller contract, not an agent–agent payment instruction. It records that commission is owed to a named brokerage. It does not dictate how that brokerage then distributes the money to co-broking parties.
RERA expects all commission arrangements to be documented in Form A or Form B. If a commission dispute arises, RERA’s Rental Disputes Settlement Centre handles the case, and having a written agreement is essential to win any dispute. An agent who relies on WhatsApp messages and memory to prove a 50/50 split is walking into the RDSC without a map.
Stage three: The post-deal delay
The commission is collected. The transfer is done. Everyone shakes hands. And then nothing happens for two weeks. The listing agency’s accounts team is processing other deals. There is no mechanism to trigger the payout to the co-broking agency. No one has a deadline. No one signed anything that creates one.
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.
The delay compounds in the off-plan segment. Developers do not pay commissions at the point of sale. The standard payment schedule ties commission release to buyer payment milestones. This creates a thirty-to-ninety-day lag between the sale and full commission receipt. For brokerages managing cash flow, this delay means maintaining working capital to cover agent payouts and operational expenses before developer payments arrive. If the co-broking agreement was not written before the SPA was signed, the co-broking agency is chasing an amount from a firm that is itself waiting on a developer — and has no signed obligation to pass it on at a specific time.
Stage four: The dispute
By the time a dispute crystallises, neither party is entirely wrong and both are operating from memory. The listing agent recalls the agreed split as 60/40. The buyer’s agent recalls 50/50. The WhatsApp thread is ambiguous. The deal closed six weeks ago and both agents have moved on to other listings.
If a commission dispute arises, RERA’s Rental Disputes Settlement Centre handles the case — and having a written agreement is essential to win any dispute. Filing at the RDSC is not an overnight process. It costs time, focus, and — for rental disputes — a base filing fee of 3.5% of the annual rent or claimed amount, with a minimum of AED 500 and a maximum up to AED 20,000. For a commission dispute between agencies, the out-of-pocket filing cost alone can exceed the value of the contested amount on a mid-range deal. The rational choice is often to accept less and move on — which is exactly what the delaying party is banking on.
The rental deal: same friction, faster cycle
Secondary market sales take weeks to close, so the gaps above have time to become visible. Rental deals are faster, which means the same gaps compress and explode more quickly.
The rental commission is straightforward in principle: for rentals, the commission is typically 5% of the value of the annual rent. The standard is 5% of the annual rent, subject to a minimum of AED 5,000, plus 5% VAT on top — paid by the tenant to the brokerage that arranged the tenancy. The timing is equally clear: commission is due when the Ejari-registered tenancy contract is signed and the security deposit and first cheque are handed over.
But “when Ejari is registered” creates its own ambiguity in a co-broking rental. The listing agent’s name is on the tenancy contract. The agency VAT invoice goes out under one ORN. Ejari is the official tenancy contract registration system managed by the Dubai Land Department through RERA. Without Ejari, you cannot proceed with DEWA registration, manage family residency visas, or seek legal recourse through the Rental Dispute Centre. The landlord’s agent registers the Ejari. The tenant’s agent collected the commission cheque. Who owes what to whom, and by when, is entirely a matter of whatever was agreed — or not agreed — between the two agencies before the keys changed hands.
Post-dated cheques add an additional wrinkle. For decades, Dubai’s rental market operated on a system where tenants issued landlords a series of post-dated cheques covering six to twelve months of rent upfront. The commission is typically a single cheque paid at signing. The tenant hands the cheques to the landlord or agent at signing, alongside the agency commission — typically 5% of annual rent — and any admin fees. The contract is then registered on Ejari so the tenancy is official. If the commission cheque is payable to one agency and the other has not signed anything that obligates a split payment before the deal closed, the co-broking agency is now in the position of chasing a favour rather than enforcing a contract.
Off-plan: the longest gap between work and payment
Off-plan introduces structural delays that make the problem worse at scale. 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. All buyer instalment payments flow into that escrow account, which is managed by a RERA-licensed trustee — typically a bank. The developer may only withdraw funds upon reaching verified construction milestones certified by a RERA-approved engineer.
None of this protects the broking agencies from each other. Developer commissions flow to the registered co-broking brokerage once the developer processes the paperwork — but the split between two agencies that worked the same buyer is still governed by whatever they agreed privately. For off-plan properties, the commission may vary depending on the project, developer, and brokerage agreement, and typically ranges between 2% to 8%. With large ticket sizes and higher commission rates, the amounts involved in off-plan agent-to-agent disputes are proportionally larger — and the timelines are longer, because the developer’s payment schedule tracks construction milestones that may be months away.
An agent who brokered an off-plan deal on a handshake split, whose co-broking partner’s brokerage was the one with the developer relationship, can wait months before finding out the developer paid out — and then wait again while the other brokerage’s accounts team decides when to process the split. Without a signed agreement created before the SPA was executed, that agent has no written instrument to enforce. VAT compounds the confusion: brokerage fees carry 5% VAT on top. If both agencies are VAT-registered, the split agreement needs to be clear about whether the agreed percentage is inclusive or exclusive of VAT — another detail that verbal agreements routinely omit.
Why the listing agency is not the enemy, but the process is broken
It is worth being direct about something. The agency holding the commission does not, in most cases, intend to underpay or delay. The delay is structural. The accounting workflow was built around transactions where all parties are internal. An instruction to split with an external agency requires someone to initiate a bank transfer manually, create an outward VAT invoice, get sign-off from a manager, and reconcile the books. That process has no automatic trigger. It competes for attention with the ten other deals in the pipeline.
RERA sets guidelines for brokerage activities, including licensing real estate agencies and professionals, enforcing compliance, regulating real estate marketing, and providing a framework for resolving disputes between parties involved in real estate transactions. RERA is the framework. The operational execution sits with the agents and their agencies. When the framework is RERA and the execution is a WhatsApp thread, the gap between the two is where money and trust disappear.
The agent who is owed money is not powerless, but they are working against structural inertia without leverage. They cannot refuse to complete the deal — the deal is already done. They cannot withhold services — the service was already delivered. Their only instruments are goodwill, repetition, and — when those fail — the RDSC, which is slow and expensive relative to a mid-range commission dispute.
What the paper trail actually needs to contain
A written agent-to-agent agreement created before the client pays — and before the MOU or tenancy contract is signed — needs to cover a short but specific list:
- The exact split percentage: stated as a percentage of the total gross commission collected from the client, and whether it is before or after VAT.
- The trigger for payment: which event releases the obligation to pay — MOU signing, DLD transfer, or Ejari registration. Not “after the deal closes”, which is ambiguous.
- The method and timeline: bank transfer, by which date after the trigger event, to which account.
- What happens if the deal falls through: if a deal falls through after the MOU is signed, the agent may still claim their commission. The inter-agency agreement needs to address the same scenario.
- VAT treatment: which agency invoices the client, which invoices the other, and how the VAT element is handled between the two.
- Identification of both parties: the BRN of the agent and the ORN of the brokerage on each side, so the agreement is tied to licensed entities.
Every real estate agent operating in Dubai must hold a valid RERA licence. This is not optional. An unlicensed agent cannot legally collect commission, and any commission paid to an unlicensed agent is not protected under UAE law if a dispute arises. The same principle applies to inter-agency arrangements: if the agreement is not tied to licensed, identifiable entities, it is harder to enforce at the RDSC and harder to treat as a legitimate commercial contract.
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. That observation is obvious when you write it down. It is almost never acted on in practice, because the deal feels like a moment for momentum, not paperwork.
The trust dimension
Commission disputes between agencies do not stay bilateral. They spread. The agents involved tell their colleagues. The agencies develop reputations — this brokerage is slow to pay, that brokerage reinterprets splits after the fact, working with them is a risk. 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.
Dubai’s secondary market, particularly in specific building clusters or community types, is operated by a relatively small professional community. Agents in the same micro-market — Marina, Downtown, JVC, Palm — know who works what inventory. A reputation for slow or disputed splits reduces the flow of co-broking referrals. The cost is not just one delayed payment; it is a series of deals that never happen because other agents quietly route their buyers to someone more reliable.
The inverse is equally true. An agent — and an agency — known for clean, documented, prompt splits attracts more co-broking. That is a competitive advantage in a market built on shared listings.
What happens when the client is caught in the middle
Commission disputes between agencies occasionally surface in front of the client, which is professionally damaging for everyone involved. A buyer standing at the DLD Trustee counter should not be hearing two agents negotiate a split. A tenant getting keys to a new apartment should not learn that the two agents who helped them are now arguing about who gets paid.
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. A client who witnesses a commission dispute has standing to file a complaint. An agent who put themselves in that position has not just lost a payment — they may have created a regulatory exposure.
The way to ensure the client never sees this is simple: the split is agreed, signed, and the payment mechanism is established before the Form F is executed or the tenancy cheques are handed over. Not after. Not “we’ll sort it once the deal is done.” Before.
The principle that removes the friction
Every problem described in this article has the same root cause: the sequence is inverted. Work happens. Deal closes. Client pays. Then — maybe — agencies agree how to share what was collected. That sequence puts the collection of money ahead of the agreement about who owns which part of it. The gap between those two events is where disputes live.
Reverse the sequence and the gap closes. The split is agreed in writing before the client pays. Every party to the deal knows exactly what they are owed, from whom, by when, and triggered by which event. When the client pays, the money flows to its destinations without anyone chasing, without anyone delaying, without a WhatsApp thread being treated as a contract.
The goal is not only faster payment — though it is that. It is the removal of ambiguity at the moment ambiguity is most expensive: after the work is done and before the money arrives. An agent who has closed the loop on a documented, agreed, pre-signed split before the deal completes is not just protecting their commission. They are operating at a standard that is visibly different from the market default, and that difference is noticed by every agency they work with.
The principle is not complicated. Sign the split before the client signs. Have every party paid as a function of the deal closing, not as a function of a manual instruction someone remembers to send. That is the standard the market is moving toward. The agents who already operate that way are ahead of it.
