Oqood Registration Explained: Your First Step to Off-Plan Ownership

Oqood, meaning "contract" in Arabic, is the official interim registration system through which the Dubai Land Department formally records a buyer's rights over an off-plan property before construction is complete, and understanding what it actually protects against matters considerably for anyone entering an off-plan purchase.

The Oqood certificate serves as official government proof that the buyer holds legitimate rights over the specific unit, and critically, it protects against double-selling: once a unit is registered under Oqood to a specific buyer, the developer cannot legally sell that same unit to another party, providing a genuine safeguard against a scenario that would otherwise be a real risk in an unregulated off-plan market. The Oqood registration fee is 4% of the property's sale value, plus small knowledge (AED 10) and innovation (AED 10) fees, alongside a developer self-registration fee of AED 1,000 for the provisional sale registration, meaning this cost is broadly comparable to the standard DLD transfer fee ready property buyers pay, just applied at an earlier stage of the ownership timeline.

Upon project completion and handover, the Oqood certificate converts into a full title deed issued by the DLD, meaning Oqood functions as a genuine pre-title deed rather than a separate, lesser form of ownership documentation, securing the buyer's rights throughout the construction period until that final conversion happens. Before a developer can even begin selling units off-plan, RERA requires them to satisfy specific regulatory prerequisites, confirmed land ownership, an activated project-specific escrow account with an approved bank, and either completing 20% of construction works with a no-objection certificate or depositing 20% of the construction value, meaning a genuinely Oqood-registered unit already implies the underlying project has cleared a meaningful regulatory bar before ever reaching the point of accepting buyer payments.