The online registration of tenancy contracts, which was introduced late last year by the real estate management authorities in Dubai, has ruffled many feathers among the real estate agencies. The online registration was introduced in order to help the real estate management authorities develop a map of average rents across different areas of Dubai. Real estate authorities are being accused of “throwing brokers into the water” by implementing the regulation, which accompanies the new rental index. I don’t know why Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Rera) is doing this,” wondered Jahangir Ahmad, administration manager of Geometrics Real Estate, in Dubai. If they want to clean up the market, why don’t they just crack down on the unlicensed brokers? We only want to focus on brokerage rather than property management, so we only have a licence for brokerage. They are throwing brokers in the water. Ahmad said he doubted that many owners were registering the properties online directly. The rules for registration mean that owners have to pay Dh2,000 and attend a full day of training to be certified to register the contracts online. Many of the owners are based in America or Pakistan. They won’t want to fly in for a day just to do this. Even if they live here, I’m sure they wouldn’t want to get tied down with this. If they want to hire a property management company than they will have to pay sky-high fees, he insisted.
The rules for registration of the properties online mean that a large number of real estate companies have been cut out of the process. On Wednesday the first part of this index was released for commercial properties. In two weeks a separate index for residential properties will be released. Many companies only have a brokerage licence from Rera, but registration can only be done by owners, or companies which hold a property management licence. However, one property investor Rashid Ahmad, said that the scheme was a good idea. “I think it will be very popular with owners. We may see up to 90 per cent of owners registering the contracts themselves. It will cut down on their expenses. Despite that, Rashid Ahmad said that he didn’t have to go through the same process himself as he had sold all of his Dubai property two months ago when prices began sliding. No one from Rera was available for comment on the index. Officials’ phones were swicthed off. Meanwhile, the announcement that the residential index would be ready in two weeks has been met by surprise from some industry figures, given that in December Rera said that the index would not be ready until 60 per cent of properties were registered.
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