Most buyers arrive in Dubai with a budget and a price, and assume the gap between them is small. It isn't. On a ready apartment you should plan for roughly 7% of the purchase price in transaction costs, and since February 2025 almost none of it can be borrowed. That single change has reshaped what a given salary can actually buy.
This is the full list. Statutory rates are marked as such. Where something is a market convention rather than law, we say so, because conventions are negotiable and statutes are not.
The DLD transfer fee: 4%
The Dubai Land Department charges 4% of the purchase price to transfer title. The law splits this 2% to the buyer and 2% to the seller. In practice, in almost every resale transaction in Dubai, the buyer pays the whole 4%. This is so standard that most agents will quote it to you as a buyer cost without mentioning the split at all.
It is technically negotiable. It is rarely negotiated. On a AED 2,000,000 apartment that is AED 80,000.
Alongside it sits a small bundle of DLD administrative charges: AED 250 for the title deed, AED 250 for the property map, AED 10 knowledge fee and AED 10 innovation fee. Call it AED 580.
The trustee fee, and the double-count to watch for
Transfers happen at a registration trustee office, not at the DLD itself. The trustee charges AED 2,000 plus 5% VAT on properties under AED 500,000, and AED 4,000 plus 5% VAT at or above that. So on a typical purchase: AED 4,200.
Here is where a lot of published cost breakdowns go wrong. Some sources list this same charge again under a different name, usually "DLD admin fee" of around AED 4,000. It is the same item. If you see both a trustee fee and a separate four-thousand-dirham DLD admin fee on a cost sheet, you are being double-charged on paper by roughly AED 4,000. Ask which one is which.
Agency commission: 2% + VAT, and when it's zero
On a resale, the standard brokerage commission is 2% of the price plus 5% VAT, paid by the buyer. On AED 2,000,000 that is AED 42,000.
On off-plan, the developer pays the agent. The buyer pays no commission at all. If an agent tries to charge you commission on a direct developer launch, that is not a market norm — that is an agent charging you for something they are already being paid for. It is worth asking the question explicitly.
The 2025 change that matters more than any fee
Since 1 February 2025, following a directive from the UAE Central Bank, banks can no longer finance the 4% DLD fee or the 2% agency commission into a mortgage. Previously many lenders would roll these into the loan. Now they cannot. That money has to exist as liquid cash on top of your deposit.
Reporting at the time suggested this affected around 70% of secondary-market mortgage buyers — that is, most people were relying on financing at least part of their fees. The effect on the ground is straightforward: the same buyer, same salary, same approved loan, now needs meaningfully more cash to complete.
Work it through on a AED 2,000,000 ready apartment as an expat buyer:
Deposit at 75% LTV: AED 500,000 down.
DLD 4%: AED 80,000.
Agency 2% + VAT: AED 42,000.
Trustee: AED 4,200.
DLD admin bundle: AED 580.
Mortgage registration (0.25% of the AED 1,500,000 loan + AED 290): AED 4,040.
Valuation: around AED 3,150 including VAT.
Bank arrangement fee, if not waived, at 1% + VAT: AED 15,750.
Cash required at completion: roughly AED 650,000, of which about AED 150,000 is fees. The AED 500,000 deposit was never the whole story.
Mortgage-specific costs
Loan-to-value caps for expats are 75% on ready property up to AED 5,000,000, 65% above AED 5,000,000, and 50% on off-plan. UAE nationals get slightly more.
Mortgage registration with the DLD is 0.25% of the loan amount plus AED 290. Valuation runs AED 2,500 to AED 3,500 plus VAT. The bank arrangement fee is nominally around 1% plus VAT, but this is one of the genuinely negotiable items — it is frequently waived entirely, particularly on larger loans or if you hold a salary account with the lender. Ask for it to be waived before you accept the offer letter, not after.
Off-plan is a different cost structure
Off-plan all-in costs are closer to 4% of price rather than 7%, and the reason is simple: no agency commission, and no separate handover fee.
The Oqood registration is the 4% DLD fee. It is paid once, on the off-plan purchase price, at the time of the initial sale. There is no second 4% charge when the building is handed over and the title deed issues. This is a persistent misunderstanding and it makes off-plan look more expensive than it is. Oqood's own administrative charge is AED 40.
What you do pay is a developer administration fee, typically AED 1,000 to AED 6,000 depending on the developer. Trustee fees are usually waived on off-plan because the developer handles registration directly.
The running costs people forget
Two of these catch nearly everyone.
The municipality housing fee is 5% of the annual rental value of the property, billed monthly through your DEWA account. If you own and occupy, it is assessed on the rental value the property would command. This is the single most commonly omitted line in Dubai ownership cost estimates, and on a unit with a AED 120,000 rental value it is AED 6,000 a year, arriving as AED 500 a month on a utility bill you weren't reading closely.
Service charges are published per building, not per community, on the DLD's Mollak index. This matters because two towers on the same street can differ by a factor of three. The range across Dubai runs roughly AED 3 to AED 30 per square foot per year, with a long tail up to around AED 68 for Burj Khalifa. Villa communities sit far lower — Arabian Ranches is around AED 3.50 per square foot.
The biggest single driver of variance is whether district cooling (chiller) is included in the service charge or billed separately. A building with chiller included will look expensive per square foot and may still be cheaper in total. Always compare like for like, and always look up the specific building rather than accepting a community-level average.
What you do not pay: there is no capital gains tax on a Dubai property sale, and no annual property tax.
Getting a real number for a real property
Generic percentages get you close. They do not tell you what a specific unit in a specific building actually costs to buy and hold, because the service charge, the chiller arrangement and the NOC vary by exactly the things a percentage can't capture.
The NOC, incidentally, runs AED 500 to AED 5,000 plus VAT and is paid by the seller by convention — but that convention lives in the MOU, and it is worth checking the MOU says what you assume it says.
If you have a property in front of you, run it through Binayah Deal Check at Deal Check. It takes a listing link, a screenshot or a brochure from any agency and returns the total cash required with every line itemised, alongside DLD-registered comparable sales for the same building. It will also tell you when it doesn't have enough data to be confident, which is the more useful answer when it's true.