We keep a file of the off-plan purchases that went wrong for clients before they came to us, and for a few after. The developer failing appears in almost none of them; the escrow regime has made that rare. What appears, over and over, is the same short list of ordinary mistakes, each of them made in the weeks before reservation and each of them checkable at the time. Here they are, in roughly the order we see them.
1. Choosing the unit before the developer
The render is beautiful, the floor plan is right, the corner is the corner you wanted. The developer has delivered one project, late, and has four more under construction. Buyers fall for units; disappointment comes from developers. Read the record first — the compare-developers tool exists for this — and only then look at the floor plate.
2. Believing the projected yield
'7% yield' on a launch brochure is a projection of a rent that does not exist yet, in a building that does not exist yet, divided by a price, before service charges, voids and management. Realised yields in the communities we track typically land one to two full points below the advertised figure. Model net, model conservatively, and treat any yield without its assumptions as decoration.
3. Ignoring what exists in the community today
A home handed over on time into a district that is three years from its school, its supermarket and its road is a home that is hard to live in and hard to let. Our community pages carry a 'what exists today' section with a date for this reason. If the answer is 'a sales centre and a beach', price the purchase as the long-dated bet it is.
The tower will probably be finished on time. The question is what will be around it when it is.
4. Buying the plan instead of the price
A 1% monthly plan over seven years sounds gentle. It is also a price. Two identical units on different plans are priced differently, and the longer plan carries the premium. Compare the price against registered sales of finished units in the same community before you decide the plan is generous.
5. Forgetting what sits outside the plan
The Land Department's 4% at the start; Oqood registration; service charges, cooling and deposits from handover; management and Ejari if you let. Buyers who budget from the payment plan alone are typically short by 6% to 8% of the price at the beginning and a year of running costs at the end. The cost-of-buying tool adds the fees; the service charges article covers the rest.
6. Paying outside the escrow account
A 'reservation fee' to a marketing company, a booking payment to a broker's account, a transfer to a developer account that is not the registered escrow account. Every one of these is outside the protection of Law No. 8 of 2007. Pay only into the registered escrow account, confirmed through the Land Department before the first transfer, and keep every receipt.
7. Planning to flip, with no plan to hold
Pre-handover resale works in a rising market and stops working, sometimes abruptly, in a flat one. A buyer who has committed to instalments they can meet only by selling the contract is the weakest hand at the table. Buy a unit you could hold — the right developer, a district with something built, a plan you can carry — and treat an early exit as an option, not the strategy.
The pattern
Six of the seven are about information that was available before reservation and was not asked for. The seventh is about honesty with yourself. None of them requires expertise to avoid; they require an hour of checking and the willingness to walk away from a launch. The launch will not mind. There will be another one next month.