How to Verify a Dubai Developer's Track Record Before You Buy

Key takeaways: Every Dubai developer is registered with RERA. Every off-plan project is required to have a registered escrow account where buyer payments are held. The DLD Oqood registry lists every project, its developer, its escrow account number, and its completion percentage. You can verify all of this yourself in about ten minutes before you sign anything.

Step 1: Find the developer in the RERA registry

The Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA) maintains a public list of every licensed developer operating in Dubai. The Dubai REST app and the dubailand.gov.ae portal both let you search by developer name. What you're looking for: the developer's RERA license number, the date the licence was first issued, and the licence status (active, suspended, or expired).

A licence first issued in 2002 with no breaks is a different signal than one issued in 2023. Both are legal — they just carry different track records. The major Dubai developers (Emaar, Nakheel, Damac, Sobha, Meraas, Dubai Properties) all have multi-decade RERA records.

Step 2: Pull the developer's project list from the Oqood registry

The DLD Oqood system records every off-plan project in Dubai by developer. Each entry includes: project name, masterplan area, escrow account number, total units, units sold, and current completion percentage. The data is public and downloadable.

What you want to see: completed projects alongside active projects. A developer with twelve projects delivered on time and three under construction is in a different category than one with zero completed projects and eight under construction. Both might be honest businesses — but one has a track record you can verify.

Step 3: Check delivery vs original handover date

Every off-plan project has an original advertised handover date when units were first sold. The actual handover date — when buyers received keys — is a matter of public record. The gap between the two is the developer's delivery slippage.

One year late is unremarkable in Dubai. Two years is common during downturns. Five years or more is a red flag. A handful of distressed legacy projects from the 2008–2014 era are still incomplete today; their developers usually have updated licences and active sales, so the slippage is invisible unless you check.

Step 4: Verify the escrow account exists and matches

Under Dubai law (Law No. 8 of 2007), buyer payments for off-plan units must be deposited into a project-specific escrow account at an approved bank, ring-fenced from the developer's operating funds. The escrow account number appears on the SPA, on the Oqood registration, and on the developer's project page on the DLD portal. All three should match.

If a developer asks you to wire payment to a personal account, a holding company account, or "the project office," walk away. That is not how a compliant off-plan sale works in Dubai.

Step 5: Read the resident sentiment for delivered projects

Numbers tell you what got built; residents tell you what it's like to own there. Dubai's expat communities on Reddit have years of unvarnished posts about specific developers and projects — handover quality, snag-list responsiveness, post-handover service-charge fights, lift breakdowns, swimming-pool maintenance. We aggregate this on our developers page with per-developer pros, cons, and a track-record score.

What the scores on Dubuy mean

Our developer score combines RERA tenure, Oqood completion ratio, average delivery slippage, and Reddit sentiment percentile. Premium-tier developers (Emaar, Sobha, Meraas) consistently score 85+ on this composite. Emerging developers can be excellent — but you should weight project-specific evidence more heavily than brand reputation, because the track record isn't there yet.

If you're shopping off-plan, also check the off-plan project tracker for active inventory by developer, and the community forecast for the area the project sits in. A great developer in a softening submarket is a different bet from a great developer in a rising one.