Developers

How to Check a Developer Track Record in Dubai: My Playbook

A step-by-step playbook for verifying any Dubai developer: Dubai REST, escrow, RERA registration, Mollak service charges, SPA clauses and delay data caveats.

Every buyer tells me they have “researched the developer”, and what they usually mean is that they read the developer’s own website and a few portal listings written by agents paid to sell the project. That is not research; that is marketing consumption. Actual verification in Dubai is unusually possible — the regulator publishes more than most buyers realise — you just have to know where to look.

Step 1: Look the project up on Dubai REST

Before anything else, open the Dubai REST app (the Dubai Land Department’s official application) and search for the exact project. You are checking three things.

First, that the project exists in the DLD’s records at all and is registered with RERA. Under Law 8 of 2007, an off-plan project cannot legally be marketed before its escrow account is registered — so a glossy launch you cannot find in the system is a conversation-ender, not a negotiating point.

Second, the escrow account details. Every dirham you pay must go into the RERA-supervised escrow account named for that specific project, held with an approved bank, from which the developer can only draw against certified construction milestones. When you eventually pay, pay into that account and no other. A payment instruction pointing anywhere else is the single clearest red flag in this market.

Third, the tracked completion percentage on projects already under construction. Compare it against how long the project has been selling. A project marketed for three years sitting at 15 per cent complete is telling you something the brochure is not.

Step 2: Visit what they have already built

This is the cheapest, highest-yield diligence available and almost nobody does it. Take the developer’s delivered projects — not the sales gallery, the actual buildings, ideally three to five years after handover — and walk them.

Look at how the lobby and corridors have aged, whether the facade is streaked, whether amenities in the brochure generation of that era actually exist and are maintained. Talk to a resident in the lift if you can; ask a security guard how snagging went. Ten minutes in a five-year-old building tells you more about finishing quality and after-sales culture than any review site. Developers with in-house construction, such as Sobha with its backward-integration model, tend to show more consistency between projects; with developers who rotate third-party contractors, quality can vary building to building — which is exactly why you visit more than one.

Step 3: Read the disclosures — if they exist

If the developer is publicly listed, like Emaar, you have audited financial statements, backlog figures and management commentary published on a fixed schedule. Read the latest annual results even if you skim: you are looking for cash position, the scale of the delivery pipeline, and whether sales are growing or being discounted into existence.

If the developer is private — and most Dubai developers are, including large ones like DAMAC since it delisted in 2022 — you simply have less. That is not a disqualifier. It means the project-level checks in steps 1, 2 and 5 carry more weight, and the developer’s claims deserve the scepticism you would apply to any unaudited number.

Step 4: Check service charges via Mollak

Service charges are the recurring cost that quietly determines your net yield, and RERA’s Mollak system standardises how they are budgeted and collected. For the developer’s completed communities, ask for the approved service charge per square foot — your agent or the owners association manager can pull this — and compare it across the developer’s portfolio and against similar communities.

A pattern of sharp post-handover service charge escalations across a developer’s projects is a track-record data point as real as any delivery date. So is the opposite: stable, defensible charges in mature communities suggest a developer that scopes its amenities honestly at launch.

Step 5: Read the SPA like the contract it is

Two clauses matter more than the rest of the document combined.

The anticipated completion date, and the grace period attached to it. Dubai market convention allows the developer an extension — commonly up to twelve months — beyond the anticipated date before any buyer remedy is triggered. That means a “Q4 2027 handover” in the brochure is often, contractually, “any time before Q4 2028 with no consequence”. Neither illegal nor unusual; just something to price into your planning, especially if you are timing a mortgage, a school year or a lease expiry.

Also confirm your purchase is registered on Oqood, the DLD’s interim off-plan registration system. Oqood is what records your interest in a unit that does not yet have a title deed. Registration should happen promptly after signing; a developer that drags on it is a developer to escalate with, in writing, before the next instalment.

Step 6: Handle delay data like an analyst, not a headline reader

Here is the uncomfortable truth about the delay statistics circulating online: no official DLD delay league table exists. Every “Developer X averages 14 months late” claim you have seen comes from third-party analyses — portal datasets, review aggregators like Trustpilot, blog trackers such as House & Hedges — each with real methodological limits. They rarely distinguish contractual lateness from missed marketing dates, they over-sample angry buyers, and they cannot see projects that were quietly re-phased before launch dates were public.

My rule: use unofficial trackers to generate questions, never verdicts. If a third-party analysis estimates ten-to-sixteen-month slippage on some of a developer’s projects, the correct response is not “avoid” — it is to check that developer’s specific projects on Dubai REST, compare tracked completion percentages against announced dates, and weight the payment plan accordingly. A developer with a shorter track record or more delivery variability can still be a rational purchase if the price and payment structure compensate you for it. What is never rational is paying benchmark prices for non-benchmark verifiability.

The one-page checklist

None of this takes more than a few days, and all of it together costs less than one per cent of the anguish of buying badly. The developers with real track records survive this process comfortably — which is precisely why they rarely mind you running it.

This article is general information about the Dubai property market, not financial, legal or investment advice. Figures change and unofficial estimates are labelled as such — verify current numbers with the Dubai Land Department or a licensed professional before committing funds.