Form A, Form B and Form F in a Dubai property deal

Three documents carry a Dubai resale from the first viewing to the counter at the trustee office. Form A appoints the seller's broker. Form B appoints the buyer's broker. Form F is the contract between seller and buyer. These are the Dubai Land Department's unified contracts, and a broker does not draft them on a laptop. They are produced inside the Dubai Brokers system, which the broker reaches either through the Dubai REST app or through the web login at dubailand.gov.ae.

Their weight comes from two separate laws. Bylaw No. (85) of 2006 Regulating the Real Estate Brokers Register governs the broker's side of the deal, and Article 26 requires a brokerage agreement to be in writing, to name the contracting parties, to specify the property and to state the brokerage terms. Law No. (7) of 2006 Concerning Real Property Registration governs ownership. Article 9 settles most arguments in a single line: transactions that create, transfer, amend or extinguish real property rights are recorded in the Property Register, and are not deemed valid unless recorded there. A signed Form F is a contract. It is not a transfer.

Form A, the seller's appointment

Form A is the agreement between the owner and the brokerage that will market the property. It is the document Article 26 of the Bylaw describes, and the same article says the agreement will be entered in the record of the Real Property Register. Nothing else in the chain works without it. The Land Department's published journey for creating a Form F begins with the broker opening an approved Contract A.

Commission is not fixed by law. Article 27 states that the broker's remuneration is determined by agreement, and in the absence of agreement, according to prevailing practice. A seller is free to appoint more than one brokerage. Article 32 deals with that directly: where several brokers are engaged severally on a single matter and only one concludes the transaction, that broker is exclusively entitled to the whole remuneration. Where several brokers act for the same party and the contract is concluded, Article 31 partitions the fee among them as though they were one broker.

Form B, the buyer's appointment

Form B does the same job on the other side. The buyer appoints a brokerage and the payment terms sit in the document. Article 33 is the one buyers discover late. A broker is entitled to remuneration from the party that appointed him, and where both parties appoint him, each is severally liable for its own share even if the two have agreed between themselves that one will carry the whole amount. A private arrangement does not release a signatory from the form he signed.

Two limits sit alongside it. Under Article 30, a broker whose efforts do not produce a concluded contract cannot claim compensation or his costs unless the brokerage agreement says otherwise. Under Article 20, a broker who puts himself forward as the counterparty to the contract he is arranging forfeits any remuneration, even where a party authorised him to do it.

How Form F is actually produced

The Land Department publishes the sequence. The broker logs in to Dubai Brokers, opens the approved Contract A, and selects Create Unified Sale Contract (F). The system then asks which active Contract B the sale relates to, which is what links the two brokerages to one transaction. From there the form is filled in stages: owner details and the share being sold, buyer details and the share being acquired, tenancy contract information, financial details, the payment plan, the contract duration, the seller's broker and the buyer's broker, the Land Department fee details, contract notes, and any additional terms.

The broker submits it for the owner's approval. Only after the owner has approved can the broker search for the contract and download it. The downloaded smart contract is password protected on opening. That matters in practice because the version circulating on WhatsApp as a photograph of a screen is not the instrument, and the state of any tenancy is captured at this stage rather than negotiated afterwards.

The deposit cheque

No Dubai law fixes the deposit at ten per cent. The figure is a convention that sits in the Form F because the parties put it there, and can be written differently. What the law does govern is the position of whoever holds it. Article 21 of the Bylaw deems the broker the trustee of any amounts, securities, bonds or other items delivered to him by either party for safekeeping or for delivery to the other party, requires him to deliver them as agreed, and binds him by the rules of trusteeship.

So when a deal collapses, the question is what the Form F says about forfeiture, not what is customary. A broker holding the cheque is not free to release it to whichever side he believes was at fault. He is holding it on terms. Article 22 makes him liable for loss caused by his own fraud or by failing to observe the Bylaw or the code of professional ethics.

What the memorandum commits you to

The Form F binds the signatories to each other. It does not move the title. Article 6 of Law No. (7) of 2006 makes the Department the only entity authorised to register real property rights, and Article 7 gives the Property Register absolute evidentiary value against all parties. Article 26 voids any agreement made in breach of that Law or with the intention of circumventing it. Off-plan resales run on a parallel track under Law No. (13) of 2008, which requires entry in the Interim Property Register.

When the broker's fee becomes payable

Article 28 sets the default. A broker is entitled to remuneration only if a contract is concluded between both parties, and it counts as concluded when all parties agree on every condition provided for in the brokerage agreement. The entitlement then arises on signing the sale contract and registering it with the Department, unless the brokerage agreement stipulates otherwise. Those last four words carry the risk. A Form A that moves the trigger forward to signature of the Form F creates a claim that survives a transfer which never happens. Read that clause before signing.

Termination does not automatically extinguish the claim. Under Article 29, where a brokerage agreement is terminated the broker may still claim his remuneration as agreed in it, unless he is shown to have committed fraud or gross negligence. Article 23 runs the other way, stripping the entitlement from a broker who acts in the other party's interest or accepts the promise of a benefit from them.

The money at the trustee office

The four per cent comes from Executive Council Resolution No. (30) of 2013, issued in Dubai on 18 September 2013. Article 3 of that Resolution makes the equal split a default rather than a rule, in its own words unless agreed otherwise. The allocation is therefore a negotiable line in the Form F, and the Department collects at registration whoever the contract names. Freehold sales also need a no-objection e-certificate from the developer, obtained through the Dubai REST app. Registration itself happens at a Real Estate Registration Trustees Center, and the Department publishes 25 minutes as the completion time. That is the counter appointment. It says nothing about how long the e-NOC or a mortgage discharge will take.

Where a dispute goes

The Bylaw creates a Council at the Department, made up of four persons and the Department's Legal Advisor, with jurisdiction to settle disputes relating to brokerage agreements. Its reach is narrower than people assume. Article 35 states that the Council will not consider a brokerage dispute unless the brokerage agreement itself provides for amicable settlement by the Department, or the disputants later agree to refer the matter, in writing, with the subject of the dispute identified. Where it does take a file, Article 38 requires settlement within thirty days of referral, extendable only for valid reasons.

That Council handles the broker relationship. A fight between buyer and seller over the Form F itself does not sit with it. On the regulatory side, Article 39 lets the Committee issue a notice or a warning, suspend a broker's activities for up to six months, or blacklist. Article 40 cancels a registration outright where a broker breaches the code of professional ethics, commits a gross violation, or accumulates three black points.

One check costs nothing and is worth doing before any of the three forms is signed. Look for the broker's registration number on the document itself. Article 12 of the Bylaw requires the name and registration number entered in the Register to appear on all correspondence and reports a broker issues, and the Register is maintained by the Department under Article 4. A form that does not carry one is telling you something.