Snagging and handover: what to check before you take the keys

A Dubai handover starts with a letter. The developer writes to say the unit is ready, sets a window for inspection, and lists what has to be paid before keys change hands. Two dates come out of that process and they are not the same date. One is the day the developer obtained the completion certificate for the project. The other is the day the unit is handed to the owner. Article 40 of Dubai Law No. (6) of 2019 Concerning Ownership of Jointly Owned Real Property hangs a different liability period on each.

The snagging inspection sits between the two. No Dubai statute requires one, prescribes a form for it, or sets a qualification for the person carrying it out. What the law does is fix what the developer must put right and for how long. The inspection is the method by which an owner finds out what falls inside that obligation while there is still time to say so.

The completion certificate, and who issues it

Law No. (6) of 2019 defines the Competent Authority as the authority in charge of issuing building permits and approving community plans in the Emirate. Which body that is depends on where the building stands. Dubai Municipality issues building permits and completion certificates. The Dubai Development Authority issues them for the areas it regulates, and publishes its prerequisites: approval of the Structural Completion Inspection on Form ZA-DC-F-74, approval of Final Land-Demarcation on Form ZA-MP-F-11, and an accepted Third Party Building Survey Report on Form ZA-DC-F-99, from which villas are excluded. A copy of the Civil Defence certificate and sewerage connections approval sit among the documents required. DDA lists a pre-inspection fee of AED 7,500 and a turnaround of three working days.

Within sixty days of that certificate being issued, Article 6(c) requires the developer to file the plans, the master community declaration, the statute and the building management regulation with the Dubai Land Department. Under Article 6(a) those documents form part of the title deed of the jointly owned property, and DLD keeps an original of each. An owner who cannot get a straight answer about what is common property and what is not can ask DLD rather than the developer.

Two clocks, two starting dates

Article 40(a) makes the developer liable for ten years from the date of obtaining the completion certificate to remedy or rectify defects in the structural parts of the jointly owned property. Article 40(b) makes it liable for one year from the date of handover of the unit for repairing or replacing defective installations, which the article lists as mechanical and electrical works, sanitary and sewerage installations, and similar installations.

There is a trap in the second of those. Refusing to take possession does not pause the year.

So an owner who holds out for six months over a dispute has not bought six months. The clock started at the certificate. Article 40(d) closes the obvious route round the problem: an agreement made after the Law came into force which contradicts Article 40 in any way is null and void. Article 40(c) preserves any other rights or warranties an owner holds against a developer under other legislation.

What the one-year obligation actually covers

Read Article 40(b) closely and it names installations. Mechanical and electrical works. Sanitary and sewerage. A chipped worktop is not an installation. Nor is a paint run, a scratched glass panel or a door leaf that fouls its frame. Whether those are made good is governed by the sale contract and the specification attached to it, not by Article 40. In practice most Dubai developers do rectify cosmetic items raised at handover. That is commercial policy, not statute. The distinction starts to matter at the point a developer begins declining items.

The technical standard behind the building is the Dubai Building Code, issued under Decree No. (45) of 2021 on 18 November 2021. Article 4 requires all public and private entities, and individuals, to comply with it. Article 3 applies it to building designs in respect of which permits are issued after the Decree's effective date, throughout the Emirate, including in special development zones and free zones such as the Dubai International Financial Centre. A tower permitted before that date was designed to what came before. An inspector quoting the Code at an older building is quoting the wrong document.

Put the list in writing and date it

Because the year under Article 40(b) runs from the handover date, a snag list carries more weight when it is dated no later than that. Send it in writing. Keep the acknowledgement. Photographs with the unit number visible in the frame are worth more later than a spreadsheet of room names, because eighteen months on nobody recalls which bathroom was which.

Re-inspection after the developer reports the works complete is the step most often skipped. Items get closed in a portal without being done.

The five per cent held behind the repairs

Money is held back for this. Article 14 of Dubai Law No. (8) of 2007 Concerning Escrow Accounts for Real Estate Development, issued on 6 May 2007, requires an escrow agent to retain five per cent of the total value of each escrow account once the developer obtains the completion certificate. The retained amount is released to the developer one year from the registration of units in the name of purchasers. Note the trigger again. Release is keyed to registration of units, not to a particular owner's handover date and not to the closing of anybody's snag list.

Structural defects, and an unsettled cross-reference

Ten years sounds generous until you ask what a structural part is. Article 40(a) does not define the term, and it opens by making itself subject to the provisions governing contractor agreements as stipulated in Federal Law No. (5) of 1985, the federal civil code. The Ministry of Justice announced in July 2026 that Federal Decree-Law No. (25) of 2025 promulgating the Civil Transactions Law had entered into force at the beginning of that month. As at 18 September 2026 the Ministry's own index of main legislations still listed Federal Law No. (5) of 1985 as the civil transactions law. The cross-reference in Article 40(a) therefore points at a statute that has been replaced, and the Dubai law has not been reissued to follow it. Anyone advancing a structural claim in the current period should expect the applicable text to be argued rather than assumed.

Where a defects claim is heard

Not where most people expect. Article 42 gives the Rental Disputes Settlement Centre exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine all disputes and disagreements related to the rights and obligations stipulated in the Law and the resolutions issued under it. The name is misleading. The Centre takes jointly owned property matters too.

Its published first-instance fee for a monetary claim is 3.5 per cent of the amount claimed, not less than AED 500 and not more than AED 15,000, with AED 100 for process service and AED 10 each for the knowledge and innovation fees. Every document has to go in in Arabic or in official translation, which is the cost most people fail to budget for.

After the first year

Once the one-year installation period closes, replacement of plant becomes a service charge question. Article 30(e)(8) provides for a cash reserve to cover emergency expenses or to replace equipment and devices in the common parts. Article 27(a) stops a management entity charging owners without the relevant approval of RERA, and Article 27(b) stops RERA approving a service charge budget unless a certified audit firm has approved it. An owner who wants to know whether a failed chiller is coming out of the reserve or out of next year's budget can read it there.

Further out, Dubai Law No. (3) of 2026, issued on 27 February 2026, requires the owner of a building to obtain a Quality and Safety Certificate once twenty years have passed from the date on which the building's completion certificate was issued. Article 3 applies that law to all buildings within the Emirate, including those in special development zones and free zones.

Before the inspection, ask the developer for two things in writing: the date on the project's completion certificate, and the name of the authority that issued it. Both belong at the top of the snag list, because every period in the table above is counted from one of them.