Listing a Dubai Property: Form A, the Trakheesi Permit and the Green List

Most Dubai sellers think the listing starts when the photographs go up. It starts two steps earlier, and both of them are regulatory.

Before a single portal listing, social media video or window card can lawfully mention your property, two things have to exist: a marketing contract between you and a named brokerage, and an advertising permit issued to that brokerage for that specific property. The second cannot be issued without the first.

Almost everything sellers complain about later traces back to this sequence being skipped. Four agencies advertising the same unit at four different prices. A listing that outlives the agreement that authorised it. Cold calls from brokers who were never appointed. Each of those has a rule behind it, and the rules are more useful to an owner than they are to an agent.

Nothing Can Be Advertised Until Form A Exists

The instrument governing real estate brokerage in Dubai is Bylaw No. 85 of 2006 regulating the Real Estate Brokers Register, which remains in force and has not been replaced. The practical rulebook built on top of it is the Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide issued by RERA's Real Estate Licensing and Enablement Department, second edition, dated November 2024.

That guide sets out three standard contracts and what each is for:

• Contract A is an agreement to market a property, between the seller and the real estate brokerage.
• Contract B is an agreement of desire to purchase a property, between the buyer and the broker.
• Contract F is the agreement to sell a property, between the seller and the buyer.

Brokers are required to use the smart versions of these contracts rather than paper ones, generated and signed through the Dubai REST app, which the guide states all real estate brokers are required to download.

Form A is therefore not paperwork an agency produces for its own file. It is the document that transfers your mandate to market the property to one named, licensed brokerage, and it is the precondition for the permit that makes advertising lawful. The DLD's own terms for the advertising permit service say it plainly: real estate brokers need marketing contracts with property owners.

What Form A Commits You To

Four fields are worth reading closely, because they are the ones sellers later discover they agreed to.

The price. Form A records the asking price you authorise. An agency advertising above or below it is outside its mandate, and the permit record makes that checkable.

The commission. The Dubai market standard is 2% of the sale price plus 5% VAT on the commission. It is negotiable, and it is agreed here rather than later.

The period. Form A runs for a stated term. When it lapses, the mandate lapses with it, and so should the advertising.

The scope. Whether the agency is appointed exclusively or alongside others.

The commission point that catches sellers is when entitlement arises. The general position is that a broker earns the commission when a contract is concluded between the parties and registered, rather than when viewings are conducted or an offer is produced, unless the brokerage agreement provides otherwise. A draft Form A that moves entitlement earlier than that is doing something unusual, and you should understand why before signing it.

The Permit Is Not Just a Portal Listing

This is where most sellers' mental model is wrong. The permit is not a portal product.

RERA requires a brokerage to obtain a permit through the Trakheesi system for any real estate advertisement or marketing material, and the DLD's service definition lists fourteen separate categories it covers: newspaper ads, SMS ads, outdoor ads, vehicle ads, print ads, electronic ads, billboards, promotional campaigns, open days, classified ads, the organising of real estate exhibitions, project launch ceremonies, real estate promotion platforms, and real estate seminars.

Vehicle wraps need a permit. SMS campaigns need a permit. An open day at your villa needs a permit. A seminar about a project needs a permit. And the guide is explicit about the consequence: the permit number must be displayed on the ad.

The exhibition rules are stricter than most people expect. A submission to organise a real estate exhibition requires one month's advance notice, a thirty-day gap is required between exhibitions from the same country, and selling during an exhibition is prohibited outright, with only preliminary reservations allowed.

The QR Code in the Corner

The QR code on Dubai property advertisements comes from a DLD service called Madmoun. It was announced on 18 April 2023 and became mandatory on 24 April 2023: all real estate companies must feature the QR code on print and audiovisual advertisements or face violations.

Scanning it returns the property's authorised details, the advertising company's information, the property's condition and specifications, and whether it is listed for sale or for rent, drawn from the Trakheesi record rather than from the advertiser. The design prevents unauthorised modification of that data. The DLD's own consumer guidance is to engage only with advertisements that carry the code, to avoid exposure to fraudulent or unreliable transactions.

For a seller the second-order effect is the useful one. The code proves to buyers that an ad is permitted, and it simultaneously makes every advertisement of your property machine-checkable against what you actually authorised on Form A. If an agency is advertising a price or a specification you never agreed, the record says so.

One Broker or Three? What the Rules Actually Say

Repeated across Dubai property writing is a claim that a seller may sign Form A with a maximum of three brokerages at once. It is stated confidently and almost universally.

No primary source says it. It does not appear in Bylaw No. 85 of 2006, in the RERA Brokerage Practice Guide, or in the DLD's published terms for the advertising permit service. What those instruments do establish is narrower and more useful: each permit is issued to a specific brokerage for a specific property, and that brokerage needs a marketing contract with the owner. Nothing in them caps how many such contracts an owner may grant.

So treat the number of agencies as a commercial decision rather than a regulatory limit, and make it on the merits.

One agency, exclusive. One accountable party, one price in the market, and a clean audit trail if something goes wrong. For Dubai resale this is the better default.

Several agencies, open. Wider exposure, at the cost of your property appearing at several prices with several descriptions, which signals a disorganised or distressed seller to precisely the buyers you want.

The failure mode worth naming is the stale listing. When a Form A lapses or is cancelled, the advertising attached to it should come down, and in practice it often does not. Owners end up with months-old listings carrying prices they have since moved away from. The permit record is the lever here, because every ad is traceable to the brokerage that pulled the permit for it.

What the Permit Costs

The figure circulating in most guides is AED 220. It does not appear in the DLD's published fee schedule for this service.

What the DLD actually publishes for the Real Estate Ad Permit is this:

Service time is one working day and the channel is the DLD website through Trakheesi.

The practical reading is that permit charges vary with what is being permitted, that the published figures sit an order of magnitude above the number most sellers are quoted, and that none of this is the seller's cost in the first place, because it belongs to the brokerage. If you are asked to reimburse an advertising permit, ask which of these lines it corresponds to.

The Green List, and the Cold Call You Should Not Be Getting

This is the least-known rule in Dubai brokerage and the one most directly relevant to an owner.

RERA provides brokers with a service through the Dubai REST app called the Green List, which gives them the telephone numbers and email addresses of registered property owners. The guide's wording on its limit is unambiguous: brokers are not allowed to contact owners who are not registered as part of the Green List, and if a broker contacts anyone not on the list, a violation will be issued and their operations will be suspended in the event of a complaint or a report against them by an investor or a client.

Read that from the owner's side. If you are not on the Green List, a broker cold-calling you about selling your property is committing a violation, and the enforcement mechanism is a complaint from you. Suspension of operations is a serious penalty for a brokerage, which is why the rule has teeth even though very few owners ever invoke it.

It also makes the Green List a decision rather than a default. Registering is how an owner opts into being approached by licensed brokers. Staying off it is how an owner turns every unsolicited approach into something reportable.

When It Goes Wrong: the Settlement Route Before Court

Most seller-side disputes in Dubai are not about Form A at all, they are about Form F, the sale contract, and there is a step before litigation that is easy to miss.

RERA operates an Amicable Settlement service for Contract F disputes. The application goes in through Trakheesi, and the relevant department convenes a meeting with both parties to discuss the breach and attempt a settlement. If no amicable solution is reached, the parties must then resort to the judicial authorities.

It is not binding arbitration and it does not suspend any deadline in your contract. It is a fast, regulator-chaired attempt to resolve a breach before anybody files, and for a deposit dispute of ordinary size it is almost always worth trying first.

One adjacent rule for owners selling an off-plan unit: a brokerage marketing off-plan must ensure the project is licensed and registered with RERA, that an escrow account exists for it, and that a marketing contract exists between the developer and the brokerage. Project registration is checkable in the Mashrooi section of Dubai REST.

The Short Version

Nothing about your property can lawfully be advertised until a Form A exists between you and a named brokerage and that brokerage has pulled a Trakheesi permit for the property, with the permit number shown on the advertisement and a Madmoun QR code on print and audiovisual material since April 2023. Read the price, commission, term and exclusivity on Form A before signing, and know that commission normally falls due on a concluded and registered contract rather than on activity. The permit covers fourteen categories of marketing including vehicle wraps, SMS, open days and seminars, not only portal listings, and the DLD's published fees for it are AED 1,000 and AED 5,000 rather than the AED 220 quoted everywhere. The widely repeated three-brokerage cap has no primary source behind it, so choose exclusivity on the merits. And if brokers you never appointed are calling you about your property, the Green List rule makes that a reportable violation that can suspend their operations.