Selling a Dubai Property From Overseas: the POA Rules That Changed and the Bank Account You Now Need

For fifteen years the standard arrangement for an owner living abroad was the same. Sign a power of attorney in front of a notary at home, get it stamped by the embassy, send it to a relative or an agent in Dubai, and let them do everything — sign the contract, attend the trustee office, collect the cheque, wire the money on.

Two changes during 2025 broke that arrangement at both ends, and they have caught sellers who had done it successfully before.

The Dubai Land Department tightened what a power of attorney must say, how recent it must be, and how it is verified. And the money stopped being something an attorney can receive on your behalf: proceeds are now expected to be paid into a UAE bank account in the name of the person on the title deed.

A seller who discovers the second one at the trustee office has a signed sale, a buyer with a cheque, and nowhere for the cheque to go.

The Two-Year Shelf Life

The current position stated by the Dubai Land Department is that a power of attorney used for a sale, mortgage or gift transaction is valid for two years from the date it was notarised, and that a power of attorney issued outside the UAE is accepted only if it was issued within the two years before it is submitted.

That is a shelf life, not an expiry written into your document. A power of attorney that says on its face that it continues until revoked is still subject to the two-year rule when it is presented to the Land Department. Plenty of overseas owners hold a POA drafted years ago, when the property was bought, and assume it still works for the sale. It does not.

The practical consequence is about sequencing. If your power of attorney is more than about eighteen months old, treat renewing it as the first task of the sale rather than something to deal with when a buyer appears — because the renewal runs through a foreign notary, an embassy and a ministry, and none of those move at the speed of a signed contract.

Getting a Foreign Power of Attorney Accepted

A document notarised in London or Lagos or Mumbai has no standing in Dubai on its own. It acquires standing through a chain, and every link has to be there.

Four points decide whether the chain holds.

• The original travels. A scan, a photograph or an uncertified electronic copy is not accepted. The physical document has to reach Dubai, which is a courier and a few days, not an email.
• Arabic is required where the document is not already in Arabic, and the translation must come from a translator licensed in the UAE rather than one certified at home.
• Apostille is not a shortcut everywhere. The UAE joined the Apostille Convention, but the Land Department's own requirement is framed around consular legalisation and ministry attestation, and practice at the counter is what governs. Ask the trustee office or your conveyancer which route they will accept for your specific country before you pay for either.
• Verification is centralised. Powers of attorney are checked against official channels, and the Land Department's July 2025 circular on the subject is explicit that verifying a power of attorney by scanning a QR code on it is not acceptable. A document that looks verifiable is not the same as a verified one.

The Words It Has to Contain

This is where otherwise valid documents fail, and it is the cheapest problem to avoid.

A power of attorney for a Dubai property sale must use specific transaction wording — language that actually grants the power to sell real property and transfer it for consideration. A general authority "to manage my affairs in the UAE", or even "to manage my property in Dubai", does not grant a power to sell. It reads as sufficient to the person signing it and is refused at the counter.

Two further things worth putting in the document even where they are not strictly demanded: identify the property by title deed number, building and unit, and name the attorney with the passport details that will be presented. A POA that is specific is harder to argue with than one that is broad, and breadth buys you nothing here.

If you can be in Dubai for the transfer, none of this applies. A seller who attends in person needs no power of attorney at all, and for a single sale the flight is often cheaper than the document chain.

The Bank Account Is Now the Critical Path

This is the change that strands people, and it deserves to be planned around rather than discovered.

Multiple UAE law firms and advisers reported from mid-2025 that the Dubai Land Department moved to require sale proceeds to be paid into a UAE bank account held in the name of the registered owner — the person named on the title deed — and that a power of attorney holder may no longer receive the proceeds on the owner's behalf. The attorney can still sign, attend and transact. The attorney cannot be paid.

Two qualifications are owed to you about this. The rule is reported consistently across independent professional sources rather than quoted from a published circular we can point you to, so treat it as settled practice rather than as a text you can read. And practice at individual trustee offices and banks varies. Confirm your own position with the trustee office and with your conveyancer before you list, not after you have accepted an offer.

What follows from it is simple and awkward: an overseas owner with no UAE bank account has to open one, and a non-resident account for someone who is not in the country, has no UAE residency and may have no UAE income is not a same-week exercise. Banks apply their own onboarding, source-of-funds and compliance requirements, several require a personal visit, and timelines run to weeks rather than days.

Start the account before the listing. It is the one step in an overseas sale that nobody else can accelerate for you.

What Leaving Actually Costs

The exit cost stack in Dubai is small and almost entirely percentage-based, which is why it stays near the same proportion whatever the property is worth.

That lands a typical unmortgaged sale at roughly 2.2% of the price all in. Compare it with the cost of buying, which runs about 6.5% in cash and nearer 9% with a mortgage, and the asymmetry is worth knowing: in Dubai it is expensive to get in and cheap to get out. The round trip is close to 8.7%, and that is the number any holding-period calculation has to clear before a sale makes sense.

Overseas sellers carry two extras. Courier and legalisation costs for the document chain, usually a few hundred dirhams plus embassy fees. And the foreign exchange spread on moving the proceeds home, which on a seven-figure sale is routinely a larger number than every DLD fee combined and is the one line nobody budgets for.

Getting the Money Out

The good news is the part people worry about most, and it is genuinely straightforward.

The UAE applies no exchange controls and no restriction on repatriating property sale proceeds, and there is no UAE capital gains tax on the sale of property by an individual. Funds can be remitted internationally from a UAE bank, and there is no clearance or permission to obtain first.

Two things are not straightforward, and both are about disclosure rather than permission.

Your home country may tax the gain even though the UAE does not. Residents of the United Kingdom, India, Canada, the United States, Germany and many other jurisdictions are taxable on worldwide gains, and a UAE property disposal is reportable there on the usual rules. The absence of a UAE tax is not the absence of a tax. Take advice where you are tax resident, before the sale rather than after it, because in several of those systems the planning that helps has to happen first.

Cash in a property transaction gets reported. Under a UAE Ministry of Economy circular announced on 7 July 2022, real estate agents and brokers must file a Real Estate Activity Report through the Financial Intelligence Unit's goAML platform where a freehold sale or purchase is settled by a single cash payment, or by multiple cash payments, amounting to or exceeding AED 55,000 — whether for the whole price or part of it. Payments in virtual assets fall in the same net.

That is a reporting duty on the professionals, not a prohibition on you, and a reported transaction is not a suspicious one. But it is a reason to be paid through the banking system rather than in cash, and a reason to have the documentary history of your ownership and your funds in order before anyone asks.

The Sequence That Works

• Open the UAE bank account first. Before the valuation, before the listing. It is the longest pole and the only one with no workaround.
• Check the age of your power of attorney. More than eighteen months old, start the renewal now. Build in courier time in both directions.
• Get the wording checked before you pay for legalisation. A conveyancer reading the draft costs very little; an embassy stamp on a POA that does not grant a power of sale costs the whole chain again.
• Clear service charges and confirm the mortgage settlement figure early. Both gate the developer NOC, and the NOC gates the transfer.
• Agree who attends. If you are travelling, you need no POA at all. If you are not, the attorney signs and attends, and the money still comes to your account.
• Price the currency move. Get a quote for the transfer home at the same time you agree the sale price, because the spread is part of your net.

The Short Version

Selling from abroad still works, but the two assumptions it used to rest on are gone. A power of attorney now carries a two-year shelf life from notarisation, must run the full chain of foreign notarisation, UAE consular legalisation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs attestation and certified Arabic translation, must be produced as a physical original, and must use wording that actually grants a power to sell rather than a general authority to manage. The Land Department's July 2025 circular also rules out verifying a power of attorney by its QR code. Separately, and reported consistently through 2025 rather than published as a text we can cite, sale proceeds are expected to be paid into a UAE account in the name of the title-deed holder, and the attorney may no longer receive them — so a non-resident account is the critical path of the entire sale and should be opened before listing. Exiting costs about 2.2% of the price against roughly 6.5% to buy in cash, repatriation is unrestricted and the UAE charges no capital gains tax, your home jurisdiction may still charge its own, and cash settlement at or above AED 55,000 triggers a Real Estate Activity Report to the Financial Intelligence Unit. Confirm the bank account and POA position with the trustee office before you accept an offer, because both are checked at the point where it is too late to fix them.

This is general information about selling Dubai property as a non-resident, not legal, tax or financial advice. Procedures, circulars and bank requirements change, and the treatment of any individual sale depends on its facts and on your own tax residence. Confirm the current position with the Dubai Land Department, a registration trustee, your bank and a qualified adviser before acting.