Oqood and the title deed: what you actually own before handover

An off-plan buyer in Dubai signs a sale agreement, pays a first instalment and is handed a registration reference. What has just been acquired is not an apartment: the apartment does not exist yet. What exists is a contractual position, registered with the Land Department, in a project that is being built.

That distinction is invisible while everything goes well and decisive when it does not.

What Oqood registration is

• It is the registration of the preliminary sale contract with the Land Department, in the interim register for off-plan units.
• It is not optional and it is not the developer doing you a favour: an unregistered off-plan sale is the single largest red flag available in this market.
• It is what makes your interest visible to the state — which is what allows an assignment later to be registered rather than merely agreed.
• The title deed comes later, on completion, when the unit exists and can be registered in the main property register in your name.

The money is paid at the beginning

• The same 4% to the Land Department is paid up front, at registration of the preliminary contract, not at handover. The principal transaction cost therefore falls when there is no property yet.
• No agency commission is charged on a developer sale. The developer pays the broker; if someone asks you for a commission over and above the developer's price list, that is a question to ask rather than an invoice to pay.
• The developer's administrative registration fee appears instead, and later, on an assignment, a separate fee for permission.
• Instalments go to the project escrow account, not to the developer's operating account, and the account name should match the project name. Check it on the first payment and on every one after.

What you can and cannot do with a registered interest

• You can sell it — as an assignment, once you reach the threshold written into your contract. That is usually a share of the price paid, often around 30–40%, though both higher and lower occur.
• The deal runs through the developer, not between two owners: without their consent an assignment is not registered.
• You cannot let it, take possession of it or mortgage it as a completed property, because there is no completed property.
• Financing at this stage is a different conversation from a mortgage on a finished unit — a loan can be used to settle the final tranche, and that is a decision for the beginning of the plan rather than the end of it.

What changes when the title deed is issued

• The unit is registered in your name in the property register, and what you hold becomes a property rather than a claim.
• The service charge starts running for your unit, whether you have moved in, let it or left it empty.
• A resale from that point is an ordinary transfer at a trustee office, with a no-objection certificate from the developer, rather than an assignment requiring their permission.
• Handover is a stage, not a moment. Keys follow a completion certificate, and the defects inspection belongs before the final signature rather than after it.

What to check while you are still in the interim register

• That your contract is actually registered, and the reference matches your unit.
• The escrow account details on every payment request. Changed bank details in an email are the oldest fraud in this business.
• The assignment threshold in your own contract, if exiting before handover is part of the plan. A strategy not supported by a clause in the contract is not a strategy.
• Construction progress as reported to the regulator, rather than as described in a newsletter.

Based on Dubai's off-plan registration framework and Land Department escrow requirements.