A service charge in Dubai is not an invoice from a management company but a structure built by Law No. 6 of 2019. A manager may charge owners NOTHING without RERA's approval, and RERA may not approve a budget unless a RERA-accredited auditor has signed off on it. What is collected goes into a dedicated account within seven working days, may be spent on ten named purposes only, and cannot be attached by the manager's creditors. Read from the official text.
Verified against official sources on 2026-09-15: the text of Law No. 6 of 2019 comes from the Dubai Legislation Portal (dlp.dubai.gov.ae). Source links sit next to each rule and again at the end. The portal notes that the English version is a translation and that the Arabic text prevails in case of conflict. This is not legal advice: a specific invoice is judged on the documents of the specific building.
A service charge arrives as an invoice, and so it gets discussed as an invoice: "expensive", "unclear what for". Yet there is a law behind it, and that law says who may name the amount, which account it lands in, and what it may be spent on. A complaint phrased in those terms sounds very different from one phrased as frustration.
The document is Law No. (6) of 2019 Concerning Ownership of Jointly Owned Real Property in the Emirate of Dubai, issued on 4 September 2019. The management bodies and the owners committee we covered separately; this piece is about the money.
Where your share comes from
Article 25: an owner pays the management entity his share of the annual service charges covering management, operation, maintenance and repair of the common parts. The share is calculated on the ratio of your unit's area to the total area of the property, by the method approved by the Director General. And a separate paragraph fixes which area counts:
«the Owner's share of the Service Charges will be calculated based on the area of his Unit as recorded in the Real Property Register» — Law No. (6) of 2019, Article 25(b)
Not the brochure area and not the contract area — the area in the register. Why the register decides such questions at all is set out in our reading of Law No. 7 of 2006.
The same article answers something off-plan buyers keep asking: the developer pays his share for unsold units, and for sold units where the sale or reservation agreement has him paying on the purchaser's behalf.
Two different charges that are often confused
Article 26 introduces a second payment — usage charges. A master developer collects them from owners or sub-developers for managing and maintaining the common parts of the master project. An important detail: they apply to completed buildings, buildings under construction, and vacant land alike. The calculation method comes from a resolution of the Director General and must comply with the approved master community declaration.
So an invoice may carry two different charges with different bases and different recipients, and they should not be conflated.
The central prohibition
Article 27 is addressed to the manager and is drafted as a ban:
«A Management Entity must not charge Owners, or collect from them, any amounts whatsoever in return for the management, operation, maintenance, or repair of Common Parts or Common Facilities; or for any other reason, without first obtaining the relevant approval of RERA.» — Law No. (6) of 2019, Article 27(a)
"Any amounts whatsoever" and "for any other reason" leave no room for extra payments outside the budget.
Then comes a limit on the regulator itself: RERA may not approve the charges budget unless it has been approved by an audit firm accredited by RERA for that purpose (paragraph b). Where necessary, a temporary budget may be approved until the main one is (paragraph c). What an approved charge looks like in public is shown by the Mollak index.
Where the money goes and what may not be done with it
Article 30 describes the flow of funds, and three of its rules are worth an owner's attention:
| Rule | Content |
|---|---|
| the account | the manager must open a dedicated service charges account for each property with a bank licensed in the emirate and recognised by RERA |
| deposit deadline | collections go into that account within seven working days of receipt |
| protection from creditors | funds in the account may not be attached in favour of the manager's creditors, for any reason whatsoever |
The last line is the point of the whole construction: money for running the building does not answer for the debts of the company running it.
Paragraph (d) covers the interim: until RERA appoints a management company, the developer manages the property and holds the owners' charges in that same account.
Paragraph (e) lists ten — and only ten — permitted purposes: cleaning of common parts; security and safety services; operation, maintenance, repair and improvement of common parts and their fixtures, and keeping them in good condition; insurance premiums; audit fees for the accounts and budgets; management company fees in the amount and manner determined by RERA; the developer's administrative expenses on major projects as approved by RERA; creating a cash reserve for emergencies and equipment replacement; fees for RERA's inspection and oversight; and any other costs under the master community declaration approved by RERA.
The reserve gets its own strict treatment: it is held in an account separate from the service charges account and may not be spent on anything other than critical emergencies without RERA's prior approval. If the reserve does not cover an emergency, the DLD may — with RERA's prior approval — ask owners to cover those expenses (paragraph f).
Usage charges live by the same rules (Article 31): a dedicated master-project account, seven working days, the same permitted purposes, protection from the master developer's creditors. Plus one extra rule: where the developer uses common facilities for profit with DLD approval, he must deposit a percentage of the net profits into the usage charges account within ten days of receiving the proceeds.
Non-payment: what the manager may and may not do
Article 28 is blunt: an owner or sub-developer may not refrain from paying charges approved by RERA, and an owner may not waive his interest in the common parts to escape them.
Article 32 sets out enforcement: the manager has a lien on every unit for unpaid charges, and a unit may not be disposed of until they are paid. On default the manager must serve a written notice in the form approved by RERA and allow thirty days. If the debt stands, the claim is enforced by the execution judge at the Rent Disputes Settlement Centre under its rules; where necessary, the judge may order the unit sold at public auction. Court fees and advocates' fees fall on the defaulter. The same applies to usage charges owed to master developers. How that Centre is built is covered separately.
Article 29 draws the line from the other side — and this one favours the owner:
«A Developer or Management Entity must not take any action against any Owner to prevent him from taking possession of, or using, his Unit or using Common Parts or Common Facilities, with the intent of forcing him to pay Service Charges or Utility Services in contravention of the procedures stipulated in this Law» — Law No. (6) of 2019, Article 29
In other words, the route to recovery is set by law — notice, thirty days, enforcement through the Centre. Cutting off access instead of that procedure is not what the law provides.
Who checks the manager
Article 33 gives RERA the power to inspect and audit how the property is run. Among the listed powers: inspecting the property and common parts and verifying their fitness; recording violations and serving notices on developers or managers with deadlines to remedy; auditing revenue and expenditure on the service charges and usage charges accounts, requesting data and engaging an accredited auditor; considering complaints against developers, management entities and owners committees; and auditing managers' contracts with maintenance, security, cleaning and insurance providers.
The complaints power is worth remembering: the law itself names where a building-management grievance goes.
If you let your apartment
Article 16: an owner may lease his unit, but both he and the tenant remain bound to comply with the statute, the master community declaration and the building management regulation. And then a rule that regularly surprises people: unless the lease says otherwise, the owner pays the service charges and usage charges, and in all events the owner is not discharged if the tenant fails to pay.
What we do NOT claim here
- No amounts or rates. There is not a single charge figure in this piece: the law sets the procedure, and amounts are approved per building and published by the regulator.
- The share calculation method in detail. The law defers to a resolution of the Director General; we do not quote that text.
- The master community declaration of any given project. That is a project document, not a statute.
- RERA's practice on complaints. The powers are named in the law; how they are applied in specific cases does not follow from the text.
- Amendments after 2019. We read the text as the portal publishes it; nothing here is said about later amendments, if any exist.
Sources
- Law No. (6) of 2019 Concerning Ownership of Jointly Owned Real Property in the Emirate of Dubai — Dubai Legislation Portal: Article 16 (leasing out; charges on the owner unless agreed otherwise), Article 25 (share by register area; developer's share for unsold units), Article 26 (usage charges in the master project, including buildings under construction and vacant land), Article 27 (no charging without RERA approval; budget only with an accredited auditor's approval; temporary budget), Article 28 (no refraining from payment, no waiving the interest), Article 29 (no obstructing use to force payment), Article 30 (dedicated account, seven working days, protection from creditors, ten permitted purposes, reserve in a separate account, recourse to owners if the reserve falls short), Article 31 (usage charges account; percentage of net profits from commercial use of common facilities within ten days), Article 32 (lien, thirty days from notice, enforcement at the Rent Disputes Settlement Centre, public auction, costs on the defaulter), Article 33 (RERA inspection and audit, complaints). Issued on 4 September 2019.
