How to Read a DLD Transaction Record (and What an Oqood Number Tells You)

Key takeaways: A DLD transaction record describes a completed sale; an Oqood number describes an off-plan unit reserved before completion. Both are searchable on the Dubai REST app. The fields you actually care about are price, area (sqm and PSF), transaction date, property type, and — for off-plan — completion percentage and escrow account.

What a completed DLD transaction record contains

When a property changes hands in Dubai, the transfer is registered with the DLD and a record is created. The public fields are:

• Transaction date — the day the transfer was registered, not the day the SPA was signed
• Area name — the DLD's internal community name (e.g. "Marsa Dubai" for Dubai Marina; "Burj Khalifa" for Downtown)
• Building name and unit number — for apartments; for villas, the plot reference
• Property type and sub-type — Flat, Villa, Land, Hotel Apartment, Office, Shop, Building
• Built-up area in square metres (multiply by 10.764 to get square feet)
• Procedure — Sale, Mortgage, Gift, etc. ("Sales" transactions are what you want for valuation work)
• Price in AED
• Bedroom count — sometimes blank for older records

What an Oqood number means

"Oqood" (عقود, the Arabic word for "contracts") is the DLD's system for registering pre-construction sales. Every off-plan unit gets an Oqood reference the moment the buyer's reservation is filed with the DLD. The reference looks like a long alphanumeric string and is unique per unit.

The Oqood record contains everything in a completed-sale record plus:

• Project name and developer name
• Escrow account number and approved bank
• Completion percentage at last RERA inspection
• Original advertised handover date
• Payment plan structure (typically 10-20-70 or similar)

If you're buying off-plan, the seller — whether developer or secondary buyer — must show you the Oqood record. No Oqood means the unit isn't registered, and that means it isn't yours yet, no matter what a brochure says.

The PSF arithmetic

The most useful derivation from a DLD record is price per square foot:

PSF = Price ÷ (Built-up area in sqm × 10.764)

Compare your target unit's PSF to the community median PSF (we publish this for every Dubai community on the community pages) and the building median PSF where available. Two units in the same building can sit 30% apart on PSF depending on floor, view, and condition — but neither should sit 100% above the building median without a very good reason.

Watch the dates

A DLD record dated yesterday tells you the market today. A record dated 18 months ago tells you the market then. When you pull a "comparable sales" list, sort by date descending and weight the most recent transactions heavily. A community can move 20% in twelve months — old comparables are misleading.

Also watch for thin volume. A median PSF computed from three transactions over the last quarter is much less reliable than one computed from three hundred. The community grid on Dubuy shows 5-year transaction volume alongside the headline PSF — it's the second number you should look at, not the third.

Where to pull records yourself

The Dubai REST app is the easiest place. Search by building, plot, or Oqood number. The DLD Open Data portal at dubailand.gov.ae publishes the raw transaction CSVs for download. Both are free.

If you want pre-processed data — median PSF, YoY change, rental yields per community — Dubuy aggregates the same DLD records across every Dubai community so you don't need to crunch the spreadsheets yourself.