What You Actually Walk Away With: Net Proceeds on a Dubai Sale

Every Dubai seller knows their asking price. A surprising number do not know their net proceeds, which is the only figure that decides whether the sale achieves anything.

The two are not far apart in Dubai. Exit costs here are low by international standards and they are almost entirely predictable, which is exactly why there is no excuse for discovering them on transfer day. A seller who works the number out before signing the Form F negotiates differently, because they know what a buyer's AED 20,000 chip actually costs them after everything else has come off.

The Deduction Stack, in the Order It Bites

Four things come off a Dubai sale price, and they do not arrive at the same time.

• Agency commission, 2% of the sale price plus 5% VAT on the commission. This is the largest line by a wide margin and it is percentage-based, so it scales with the price.
• The developer NOC fee, roughly AED 500 to AED 5,000 plus VAT depending on the developer. A fixed cost, paid before transfer, and non-negotiable in practice.
• Service charge settlement, whatever is outstanding on the unit up to the handover date. Not a fee, but money that leaves the proceeds.
• Mortgage settlement, if there is one, meaning the outstanding balance, the early settlement charge capped at 1% of the balance or AED 10,000 whichever is lower, and release and registrar fees of around AED 1,290 plus AED 315.

The 4% DLD transfer fee, the AED 580 admin charge and the trustee office fee of AED 4,000 below AED 500,000 or AED 4,200 at or above it are the buyer's costs by convention. Convention is not law. The Form F governs, and a buyer who negotiated a split of the transfer fee has shifted roughly 2% of the price onto the seller, which dwarfs every other line in this list. Read that clause before you read the price.

On the archive's figures a normal Dubai exit runs to about 2.2% of the sale price with no mortgage, against roughly 6.5% to buy for cash and near 9% with a mortgage. The round trip is about 8.7%.

Worked Example One: An Apartment at AED 1.5 Million, No Mortgage

That is 2.47% gone in total, of which the service charge is money you owed anyway rather than a transaction cost. Strip it out and the pure cost of selling is AED 33,000, or 2.2% on the nose.

Worked Example Two: The Same Flat With AED 800,000 Still Owed

Two things are worth noticing here. The early settlement charge is capped at the lower of 1% and AED 10,000, so on balances above AED 1 million it stops growing, and at AED 8,000 on this balance it is a rounding error against the price. And the mortgage itself is not a cost. It is your own debt being repaid out of your own money, which is why the honest comparison is against your equity rather than against the headline price.

The sequencing is where mortgaged sales go wrong rather than the arithmetic, and the archive covers that separately in the guide to selling a mortgaged property.

Worked Example Three: A Studio at AED 650,000

The pure selling cost here is AED 15,150, or 2.33%, barely different in percentage terms from the AED 1.5 million flat. That is the structural point about the seller's side of a Dubai deal: it is almost entirely percentage-based, so it costs the same proportion at every price.

The buyer's side does not behave that way. Their stack carries the AED 580 admin charge, a trustee fee near AED 4,200 and a valuation around AED 2,900 regardless of price, so buying a studio costs a noticeably higher percentage than buying a villa. A seller who understands that asymmetry understands why small units trade on thinner margins at the buyer's end, not theirs.

The Service Charge Line Nobody Budgets For

Service charges are billed quarterly in advance by most management companies, and the developer or owners association will not issue a clearance for the NOC while anything is outstanding.

Two consequences follow. A seller who is in arrears cannot progress the sale at all until the balance is cleared, which has stalled more Dubai transfers than any other single item. And a seller who has paid the full year ahead is entitled to ask the buyer for the unused portion in the Form F, which is a normal term rather than an aggressive one.

Raise apportionment when the Form F is drafted. Asking for it after signature is a negotiation you have already lost.

When the Money Actually Reaches You

On a straightforward unmortgaged sale to a cash buyer, the seller leaves the trustee office with a manager's cheque the same day the title transfers. That is the fastest outcome available anywhere in the Gulf and it is one of the genuine strengths of the Dubai system.

Everything else is slower.

• A mortgaged buyer adds their bank's valuation and final offer letter, so four to six weeks from Form F is normal.
• A mortgaged seller adds the liability letter, settlement and release, and the deal runs bank to bank rather than through your hands.
• A buyer paying from overseas adds correspondent banking time and, increasingly, source-of-funds checks that are run on the money rather than on the person.

There are no exchange controls on moving sale proceeds out of the UAE. What there is, is a compliance process at your own bank, and large transfers out of a personal account shortly after a property sale attract questions as a matter of routine. Keep the title deed, the Form F and the trustee receipt accessible. They are the answer to every question that gets asked.

What Does Not Come Off

This is the part that still surprises sellers arriving from almost any other market.

There is no capital gains tax on a personal property sale in the UAE, no matter how large the gain or how briefly the property was held. There is no annual property tax. There is no stamp duty on the seller's side beyond the 4% transfer fee that convention places on the buyer. VAT does not apply to the sale of residential property, only to the agency commission, which is why the VAT line in the examples above is AED 1,500 rather than AED 75,000.

The exception is corporate. A company that owns property, or an individual whose property dealing amounts to a business, sits inside the UAE corporate tax regime at 9% above the threshold and should take its own advice rather than reading a seller's guide. The archive's tax guide for foreign owners covers the distinction properly.

The Short Version

A Dubai seller's costs are agency commission at 2% plus 5% VAT, a developer NOC fee of roughly AED 500 to AED 5,000, outstanding service charges, and, where there is a mortgage, the balance plus an early settlement charge capped at the lower of 1% and AED 10,000 plus about AED 1,605 in release and registrar fees. The 4% transfer fee, the AED 580 admin charge and the trustee fee belong to the buyer by convention but are governed by the Form F, so check the clause. Exit costs run near 2.2% of the price and, unlike the buyer's side, stay at roughly that percentage whether the unit is a studio or a villa. Service charges must be clear before the NOC issues, and unused prepaid charges are apportioned only if the Form F says so. Payment is same-day by manager's cheque on a clean cash sale and four to six weeks where a bank is involved on either side. Nothing is taken in capital gains tax, annual property tax or VAT on the sale itself.