Roughly six in ten of our clients complete their first Dubai purchase from another country. Off-plan makes that easier rather than harder: there is no viewing to arrange, the developer's paperwork is standardised, and the payments run on a schedule that was agreed before anyone got on a plane. What follows is the sequence as it actually happens, and the two places where it stalls.
It begins with a reservation. You choose a unit from the floor plate — not from the brochure, and we will come back to that — pay a booking amount, typically five to ten per cent, and sign a reservation form. At this point you need a passport copy and, for most developers, a short video call for identity verification. Nothing here requires you to be in Dubai.
The sale and purchase agreement follows within a few weeks. Read it. The clauses that matter are the anticipated completion date and the grace period after it, the developer's right to vary the unit, and the conditions under which you can assign the contract before handover. We annotate every SPA we are involved in before a client signs it, because the developer's sales desk will not.
Where the first stall happens
Signing from abroad is done in one of two ways: in person at a Dubai notary, or through a power of attorney given to someone here. The power of attorney is the first stall. If it is drawn up in your own country, it must be notarised there, then attested by the UAE embassy, then attested again by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dubai before it can be used. That chain can take three to six weeks and any error in the wording sends it back to the start. Dubai Courts now offer remote notarisation by video for some documents, which removes most of the delay when it applies — we will tell you whether it does for your situation.
Once the SPA is signed, the developer registers the sale with the Dubai Land Department's off-plan register, Oqood. The registration fee is four per cent of the purchase price, paid at this stage rather than at handover, plus a small administration charge. Your instalments from here go into an escrow account registered with RERA and are released to the developer only against certified construction progress, which is the single most important protection an off-plan buyer in Dubai has.
The power of attorney and the bank are where remote purchases lose weeks. Neither is difficult; both are slow if you start late.
Where the second stall happens
The second stall is money. International transfers to a developer's escrow account routinely trigger source-of-funds questions from the receiving bank, particularly on the larger construction-linked instalments. The fix is to prepare the documentation once — bank statements, proof of the funds' origin, the SPA — and send it with the first transfer rather than waiting to be asked. Clients who do this rarely see a delay; clients who do not can find an instalment held for a fortnight while a compliance team works through it.
Handover, two or three years on, is the part most people forget to plan for. Someone needs to inspect the unit, log the snagging, collect the keys and register the title deed. If you are not here, that is what the power of attorney is for, and it is worth appointing an advisor who will actually walk the apartment rather than sign for it unseen.
None of this should put you off. The Dubai off-plan process is more regulated than most buyers from Europe or Asia expect, and the escrow system has done its job through two downturns. Start the power of attorney early, prepare the bank paperwork once, and ask for the floor plate before you fall for the render.