How to check an escrow account in Dubai before you pay anything
This is the part that matters, and it takes about two minutes. Do it before any money moves — not after a reservation form, not after a deposit.
The two-minute check
-
Get the exact project name from the SPA, not the brochure
Marketing names and registered names differ. 'Parkgreen' is 'PARKGREEN RESIDENCES BY ALISHAAN' on the register. Use the name on the sale and purchase agreement or the reservation form.
-
Look the project up on the DLD register
Use the Dubai Land Department's project enquiry, or the Dubai REST app, which is the same data on a phone. If the project does not appear at all, stop here — there is nothing to buy into yet.
-
Read the status field
ACTIVE means cleared to sell. PENDING means registered but not cleared. On our 1 October 2026 read, all 278 ACTIVE projects had escrow open and 100 of the 108 PENDING ones did not. Status is the fastest proxy you have.
-
Confirm an escrow account and a named trustee are recorded
The register names the account trustee — the DLD-accredited bank holding the account. No trustee named means no protected account to pay into.
-
Match the payment details against the register before you transfer
The account must be in the project's name, at that trustee bank. Compare it against the details on the invoice or reservation form, character by character.
-
Stop if the money is going anywhere else
A developer's general account, a brokerage account, an individual's account, a cash payment, or any account outside the UAE. Escrow law protects money inside the account and nothing outside it, so a payment sent elsewhere is simply unprotected — whatever the reason given.
ACTIVE with a named trustee, and payment details that match: proceed. PENDING, or details that do not match: stop, and ask in writing why.
What Dubai property escrow account requirements actually say
The rule comes from Dubai Law No. 8 of 2007 Concerning Escrow Accounts for Real Estate Development, which is the law people are searching for when they look for an escrow rules PDF. The text is published by the Dubai Government legislation portal and by the Dubai Land Department; it is short, and it is worth reading rather than taking a broker's summary of it.
The core requirements are these. A developer selling units off-plan must be registered with RERA. For each project, separately, it must open an escrow account with an account trustee — a bank or financial institution accredited by the DLD for this purpose. Every payment from every buyer in that project goes into that account, in the project's name. The developer cannot treat it as working capital: withdrawals are released against verified construction progress, which is why the register carries a completion percentage at all.
Two details matter more than people expect. First, the account is per project, not per developer — money raised for one tower cannot legally be spent finishing another, which is the specific failure that wiped out buyers in 2008. Second, a percentage of the money is retained in the account after the building is finished, released only once the units have actually been registered to their buyers, so that a developer cannot take the last payment and walk away from the handover.
The requirement is on the developer, not on you. You cannot open an escrow account as a buyer, and you should never be asked to.
What the register shows in 2026: 102 projects with no escrow account
We track the DLD project register because the gap between what is registered and what is being marketed is where buyers get hurt.
Of 387 projects on the 2026 register, 285 have escrow open, carrying AED 83.05 billion of declared value and 80,611 declared units. The other 102 have no escrow account: AED 25.73 billion and 9,982 units. In most cases that is simply timing — a project is registered first and cleared to sell afterwards, and the gap closes in weeks.
The ones worth knowing about are the six where construction has started without an escrow account open. Haus of Tenet is 20.6% complete. Sea Mirror Residences is 10.4% complete and has declared 19 units. AL EZZ TOWER BY ABU ALNAGA has declared 202 units at 1.7% complete. Building before the account is open is not illegal — a developer may fund early work itself — but it means there is no protected account behind the project at the moment it looks most convincing in a brochure.
The 102 projects are spread across 92 different developers, so this is not one bad actor. It is a normal feature of a register that moves faster than its paperwork, which is exactly why checking the specific project matters more than checking the developer's reputation.
92 different developers hold those 102 projects. Reputation is not a substitute for checking the project you are actually buying into.
Dubai property escrow account fees — who pays, and how much
The short answer for a buyer: you pay nothing for the escrow account itself.
The costs sit with the developer. It pays the DLD to register the project, it pays the trustee bank to open and administer the account, and it absorbs the administrative cost of every release request against construction progress. Those are business costs, priced into the unit, and they do not appear as a line item on your statement. The DLD publishes current fee amounts and they change, so take them from the DLD fee schedule rather than from a listing page — including this one.
What you do pay on an off-plan purchase is separate and unrelated: the 4% DLD transfer fee, the Oqood registration fee for recording an off-plan unit in your name, and whatever administrative fee the developer charges. None of those is an escrow fee.
So if an agent tells you there is an escrow fee you need to pay, or asks you to transfer a sum to 'open' or 'activate' an escrow account, that is not a real charge. The account is already open or it is not, and either way it is not funded by you as a separate payment.
There is no buyer-side escrow fee in Dubai. A request to pay one is a request to send money somewhere it does not belong.
The benefits — and the three things escrow does not protect you from
The benefits are real and specific. Your money is held in the project's name, not the developer's, so it cannot be moved to another project or used to service unrelated debt. Releases are tied to verified construction progress, so a developer that stops building stops getting paid. A retention is held back until units are registered to buyers, so the handover itself is funded. And if the project is cancelled, the account is the pool the DLD administers when working out what buyers get back.
What escrow does not do is where people get caught.
It does not guarantee the project finishes. Escrow controls where your money sits and when it is released; it does not create demand, fix a developer's cost base, or make a site viable. Projects with perfectly functioning escrow accounts get cancelled.
It does not guarantee you get all your money back. A cancelled project's escrow account has already paid out against completed work. What is left is what is left, and the DLD distributes it.
It does not protect a payment you made outside the account. This is the common one. If you transferred to the developer's general account, to a broker, or to an individual, escrow law is not the thing that helps you — the money never entered the protected account. The protection attaches to the account, not to the project and not to your intention.
Escrow protects the money that goes into it. Nothing else. That is the whole of it, and it is enough if you use it properly.
How to open an escrow account in Dubai (and why you will not be doing it)
This gets searched a lot by buyers who have misread what escrow is, so it is worth being direct: opening a real estate escrow account is a developer process, not a buyer one. You cannot open one, and there is nothing for you to do here.
For completeness, this is the developer's sequence — and it is also why status and escrow track each other so closely in the data above.
The developer's sequence
-
Register as a developer with RERA
The company itself is licensed before any project exists.
-
Secure the land and the project approvals
Ownership or a development agreement over the plot, plus design and authority approvals.
-
Register the project with the DLD
The project enters the register. This is the point at which it appears publicly as PENDING — and the point at which we build its page.
-
Open the escrow account with a DLD-accredited trustee
One account, in the project's name, at an accredited bank. The trustee and the DLD sit between the developer and the money from here on.
-
Status moves to ACTIVE and the project may sell
Only now is the developer cleared to take buyer money. Anything collected before this point sat outside the protected account.
Buyer-side: nothing to open, nothing to pay. If you are being asked to do either, verify the project on the DLD register first.