September 2026
The sentence I say too often
"Ten per cent down."
I say it, or a version of it, most working days. It is true. It is what the payment plan says. And for a long time I said it without saying the second number in the same breath, which is the one the buyer actually needs: roughly four and a half per cent more, in cash, within the first few weeks.
That is the admission. Not that I hid anything. The fees are in the paperwork and every buyer is told about them at some point. But "at some point" is not the same as "in the first sentence", and the first sentence is the one people build their budget from.
So this week I sat down and did the sum properly, for a AED 1,000,000 unit, four ways.
The sum
Direct from the developer, ten per cent down. A hundred thousand for the deposit. Forty thousand for the land department's four per cent, which in practice the buyer pays in full. About four and a half thousand more in admin, Oqood and developer charges.
About a hundred and forty-four and a half thousand. Around forty-five per cent more money than the number on the brochure.
None of it can go into a loan. Since February 2025 the banks are not allowed to finance transaction fees. It is cash, and it is due with the deposit, not at handover.
That part I knew. What I learned was in the other three scenarios.
The model that was right and wrong at the same time
The research I worked from leaned on a single modelled breakdown, and the breakdown was beautiful. Four scenarios, every line itemised, totals to the dirham. 14.46%. 24.46%. 26.98%. 55.45%.
I rebuilt every line by hand. Every sum was correct.
And two of the four were wrong.
The resale scenario, buying someone else's off-plan contract, left out the developer's charge for consenting to the transfer. That charge is reported at two to five per cent of the price, and without the consent the contract does not move. On a million dirhams that is twenty to fifty thousand missing from a table that looked complete. Put it back and the entry cost goes from twenty-seven per cent to somewhere between twenty-nine and thirty-two.
The mortgage scenario said a buyer using a fifty per cent loan needs 55.45% of the price "on Day 1". The arithmetic is fine. The day is not. Off-plan mortgages in the UAE are capped at fifty per cent, and banks do not release that money until the building is well along: around thirty-five to forty per cent complete for residents, around sixty for non-residents. On Day 1, a mortgaged buyer needs exactly what a cash buyer needs. The 55% is what they put in across the whole build.
Both of those errors would have survived a calculator. That is the uncomfortable part.
Why precision is persuasive
A number that ends in 580 feels checked. Nobody makes up 144,580. It has the texture of something somebody sat down and added.
And somebody did. But adding is the easy half. The hard half is asking whether every line that should be in the sum is in the sum, and whether the label on the total describes the moment it claims to describe. A calculator cannot tell you that a fee is missing, and it cannot tell you what day it is.
I have been making a version of this argument about the market for months: people repeat each other's summaries without checking them. This topic added something I had not put into words. The summaries most worth checking are the precise ones, because precision is exactly what stops people checking. Nobody audits a round number. Everybody should audit 55.45%.
The small thing that bothered me most
The same AED 580 shows up in the research twice. Once as a land department admin fee at booking. Once, in a different guide, as the title deed fee at completion. It is possibly one charge being counted in two places.
It is five hundred and eighty dirhams. It does not matter to anyone's budget.
It matters to me because it is a tell. If the fee guides cannot agree on what a five-hundred-dirham charge is for, they have not been checked against the land department's own schedule, and neither had the research I was reading. I could not settle it this week either. One page from the land department would settle it and the Oqood fee disagreement with it, and until I have that page I am printing both versions rather than picking one.
What I am changing
Two things, both small.
When I say "ten per cent down", I will say the fee number in the same sentence. On a million dirhams: a hundred thousand and about forty-five thousand in fees, all cash, all in the first few weeks.
And when I see a number precise to the dirham, I will ask two questions before I repeat it. Is anything missing from the sum? And is the label on the total true?
I am a broker, not a financial adviser, so none of this is advice on whether to buy. It is only about making sure the number in your head is the one you will actually need.
Idris Dad writes about off-plan strategy across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Ras Al Khaimah.
More on how I work with buyers at offplancrypto.com.
Nothing here is financial or mortgage advice. I am a licensed real estate broker, not a financial adviser, and no developer or project is named.
