The famous four per cent is charged for registering a sale. But the Land Department runs a separate service that rewrites a title deed from one party to another on the strength of official letters from government entities, and its bill carries no percentage whatsoever: AED 250 for the deed, maps at 100, 225 or 250, and AED 10 each. Twenty-five minutes, and a single door: the main building.
Cross-checked with the primary source on 17 September 2026: the Dubai Land Department service page "Title transfer application". We went to the source directly; a link sits next to every figure and again at the end.
We covered "the famous 4%" separately: registering a sale costs two per cent from the seller and two from the buyer. Next to it in the catalogue sits a service with a similar name and an entirely different bill, and almost nobody writes about it.
What the service is
Verbatim: "This service allows to apply for registering a transfer of title deed by transferring the title deed of a property to be transferred from an entity to another, or from one person to another, and vice versa, according to the official letters issued by government entities."
In substance: re-registration of a title deed from one party to another, entity to entity, person to person, and either way between them, with official letters issued by government entities as the ground.
This is not a sale. There is no transaction value for a percentage to attach to, and the bill indeed carries none.
The bill: fixed lines only
| Line | Amount | Where it is stated |
|---|---|---|
| Issuance of each Certificate of Title / Title Deed | AED 250 | service page |
| Land plot map outside Dubai Municipality jurisdiction | AED 100 | service page |
| Land map unified with Dubai Municipality | AED 225 | service page |
| Apartment map | AED 250 | service page |
| Villa map | AED 250 | service page |
| Knowledge fee per drawing | AED 10 | service page |
| Innovation fee per drawing | AED 10 | service page |
| Service time | 25 minutes | service page |
The comparison with a sale is the point of this page, so we make it plainly. Registering the sale of a AED 2,000,000 property costs 2% from the seller and 2% from the buyer; that is our arithmetic from the published rate, and it comes to AED 40,000 on each side. Here, on the same property, the fixed part is identical and there is no percentage at all: the Department assigns none on this page.
A caveat, without which the comparison would be dishonest. The absence of a percentage does not mean the transfer is free in substance, nor that it can stand in for a sale. The ground is an official letter from a government entity rather than the will of the parties: without such a letter the service does not start. What the letter must contain and which bodies issue it, the page does not list, and we do not fill that in for it.
Documents: four lines and nothing spare
- a letter from the transferor, whether a person or an entity;
- the owner's Emirates ID, or an official power of attorney if they are not present;
- copies of valid passports for non-resident owners;
- trade licences for companies.
Note what is absent: a contract, a valuation, a clearance certificate, a developer's consent. The core is a letter and proof of identity.
One door, and no centres
A single channel is listed: the Land Department's main headquarter. No app, no registration trustee centres, no website. We saw the same narrow route on contract cancellation by court order, where the door is also single, and it marks procedures that rest on another body's document.
Applicant status, by contrast, is wide: UAE citizen, residents and tourist. Residency is not required.
The outputs are an electronic title deed and an electronic map.
Where such a transfer shows up in practice
We will not list cases the page does not name. From its own wording exactly one thing follows: the transfer runs between persons or entities on a government body's letter, not on a sale contract. Everything else belongs to the letter, not to this service.
Neighbouring procedures we have covered: inheritance title transfer, gift registration within the general transfer of ownership, and division between co-owners. Each has its own bill, and they differ.
Where we stop
- Which letters, from which bodies, are accepted. The page says "official letters issued by government entities" and gives no list.
- Whether anything is payable beyond the Department's fees. No service partner fee is named on this page at all, unlike neighbouring services in the cluster where it has its own line.
- Whether an ordinary deal can be structured this way. The service describes a transfer on a body's letter; the page does not offer it as a substitute for a sale, and neither do we.
- A grand total. The Department does not add its lines up, and we print no total of our own.
- How many deeds are issued in a given case. The fee is stated "for each certificate", and the number depends on the property.
Sources
- Title transfer application — Dubai Land Department service page: description (transfer of a title deed between persons and entities according to official letters issued by government entities), fees (AED 250 for each title deed, land plot map AED 100 outside municipality jurisdiction and AED 225 unified, apartment map AED 250, villa map AED 250, AED 10 knowledge and AED 10 innovation per drawing), service time 25 minutes, four documents (transferor's letter, Emirates ID or power of attorney, non-residents' passports, companies' trade licences), the single channel of the Department's main headquarter, issued documents — an electronic title deed and an electronic map, applicant status — UAE citizen, residents, tourist.
