Cost of Buying Property in Dubai: Fee Calculator — LaWEra Group

Cost of Buying Property in Dubai: the Calculator

The asking price is not what you will pay. On top of it come the government transfer fee, the registration trustee's charge and a handful of fixed fees. The calculator below covers the mandatory part: enter the purchase price and you get the amount the Dubai Land Department will require at registration. Every rate was checked against the DLD's official service page on 21 September 2026.

What each line means

DLD transfer fee — 4% of the price. By law the fee is split: 2% from the seller, 2% from the buyer. In practice nearly every resale deal in Dubai has the buyer paying the full 4% — a market custom that sellers price in. If you agreed otherwise, it must be written into the sale contract (Form F), not left as a verbal understanding.

Registration trustee — AED 4,000 or AED 2,000 plus 5% VAT. A ready property is not registered at the DLD counter itself but at a licensed service partner, the registration trustee office. Its fee is AED 4,000 for a property priced from AED 500,000 and AED 2,000 below that; VAT at 5% is added on top and appears as its own line in the calculator: the fee and the tax on it.

Fixed DLD charges — AED 520. Title deed AED 250, unit or villa plan AED 250, knowledge fee AED 10, innovation fee AED 10. These do not move with the price.

How the registration day itself works is explained in registering a sale with the DLD.

What is not in the calculator — and why

The calculator only counts what is set officially and does not depend on your negotiations. Everything else varies deal by deal, and we would rather leave it out than show a figure we would later have to walk back.

• Agent commission. Set by your agreement with the agent and open to negotiation.
• Developer NOC. To sell a ready unit the seller obtains a no-objection certificate from the developer; each developer charges its own fee.
• Mortgage and bank costs. Mortgage registration at the DLD, valuation, bank arrangement fees — only if you borrow. See mortgages in the UAE.
• Annual charges after the purchase. Building service charges and the Dubai Municipality housing fee collected through the DEWA account. Those are costs of owning, not buying; see service charges.

Market guidance puts a buyer's total outlay at roughly 7–8% above the price when paying cash and 8–9% with a mortgage. That is a secondary-source estimate, not a legal rate — use it to plan a budget, not as a promise.

If you are buying off-plan

For a property under construction there is no title deed yet; the purchase is recorded through a preliminary registration called Oqood. The 4% fee is paid when the Oqood is registered and is not charged again at handover. A separate small fee for issuing the Oqood record exists, but we have no officially confirmed figure for it — we check it on the date of the deal. Your instalments go into the project's escrow account under Dubai Law No. 8 of 2007; how that protects you is explained in escrow and Oqood.

A worked example to check against

A property at AED 2,000,000: DLD fee 4% — AED 80,000; trustee AED 4,000 plus VAT AED 200; fixed charges AED 520. Total AED 84,720 in mandatory payments — before agent commission, NOC and mortgage costs. If the calculator gives you a different figure for the same price, write to us and we will check it.

The full list of cost items with explanations is in all the costs of buying, and the sequence of a deal from reservation to keys is in buying property as a foreigner.

Check your own deal

Message us on WhatsApp or Telegram at +971 58 600 98 87 and send the listing link and the draft contract; we will work out the full amount for your deal, including what the calculator leaves out. You can also work through your situation on the home page.

⚠️ The calculator shows official fees as of the date checked and is not legal advice. DLD rates are revised; we review each deal individually.