I Want to Cancel My Off-Plan Purchase and Get My Money Back

Off-plan disputes run on different rules. Place yourself in one of four situations: you want to exit although the developer is performing; you have missed instalments and the developer has started, or is threatening, termination; the developer is late, has changed the specification or is otherwise in breach; or the project has been cancelled or has stalled unfinished.

Nothing in Dubai's off-plan legislation lets a buyer end a valid, registered agreement just by changing their mind — the buyer's statutory grounds turn on the developer's failures or the general law — so the first situation is a negotiation or a resale. The second runs on the DLD procedure in Article 11. The third is covered on our delayed-handover page; this page picks it up once you want your money back. The fourth has its own forum. Many buyers are in two at once, so give a lawyer the full, dated sequence of events.

Read the sale and purchase agreement (SPA) you actually signed, with every addendum: the completion date and any grace period, whether instalments are linked to construction milestones, the default, termination, notice and assignment clauses, the specification and area schedules, and whether disputes go to court or arbitration.

Then check registration. The developer applies through the DLD's Oqood portal; the DLD's service description states that the contract shall be registered in the provisional register within 90 days from the date of signing, after which the buyer is emailed a provisional registration e-certificate. Where a developer refuses or delays registration, the DLD's published guidance says an application can be made to its Real Estate Registration Assurance section.

Registration cuts both ways — it protects a buyer, but its absence may support an argument that the sale is void — so settle strategy first. Also find out the certified completion percentage and whether a project escrow account was opened, as Dubai Law No. 8 of 2007 requires of a developer selling off-plan. The public channels for checking project status or escrow have not been confirmed for this page; a lawyer can obtain that information.

A negotiated exit or a resale. If the developer is performing, propose in writing a mutual termination with a partial refund, a move to another unit or a rescheduled plan; a settlement mediated by the DLD must be attached to the SPA as an addendum signed by both. Or sell your position, which avoids any retention — but the resale must itself be entered in the interim register, so check the SPA's assignment clause and the current requirements first.

What the developer may keep if you default. Under Article 11 of Law No. 13 of 2008, as replaced by Law No. 19 of 2020, it depends on the completion percentage the DLD certifies. Above 80%: keep the agreement alive, retain what was paid and claim the balance; ask the DLD to sell the unit by public auction at your cost; or terminate and retain up to 40% of the unit value stated in the agreement. From 60% to 80%: terminate and retain up to 40%. Below 60%: terminate and retain up to 25%. Where work had not commenced for reasons beyond the developer's control and without its negligence, or RERA cancelled the project by a final reasoned decision, there is no retention — all payments are refunded. The excess is refundable within one year of termination or 60 days of resale, whichever is earlier.

These caps are calculated on the contract value, not on what you paid: a buyer who has paid 30% of the price in a project below 60% could see up to 25% of the price retained and only 5% returned. The rules apply to agreements signed before or after 2020; sources quoting a 30% retention for a project that never started, or Law No. 19 of 2017 as current, describe replaced wording.

A developer does not terminate for non-payment by letter. It notifies the DLD, and the DLD — not the developer — serves the buyer thirty days' notice to perform, in person, by registered mail or by email. A developer's own “final notice” is not the statutory notice, so check exactly what you received, from whom and when.

Use the 30 days: pay, propose a revised schedule, negotiate an exit through the DLD's mediation, or put on record the developer's own breaches if they explain why you stopped paying. If the default continues, the DLD issues an official document confirming the developer's compliance and the completion percentage under RERA's standards; only then may the developer take its measures without going to court or arbitration.

The Article 11 rules are part of public order and non-compliance results in the nullity of the act in question, so a termination that skipped the DLD steps is open to challenge. And in the official English translation of the 2020 text, the procedure “will not preclude the purchaser from having recourse to courts or arbitration” — without the 2017 condition that the developer must have abused its powers.

The grounds. Article 20 of Executive Council Resolution No. 6 of 2010 lets a buyer “resort to the competent court to seek termination” where the developer refuses without a valid reason to deliver the final sale agreement, declines to link payments to the construction milestones proposed by RERA, materially deviates from the agreed specifications, hands over a unit unfit for use due to material construction defects, or in other circumstances requiring termination under the general legal rules. It is a court route, not a DLD one.

How to get a refund from a developer — the ordered route: (1) a written demand citing the SPA and the amount; (2) confirm registration and project status — if the project may be cancelled or unfinished, go to the Special Tribunal section below, because the forum changes; (3) a complaint to the DLD/RERA for the record, which no instrument reviewed here makes a precondition to a claim; (4) a formal notice, since under Article 234 of the Civil Transactions Law a party may ask the court for performance or rescission after giving notice; (5) a claim in the competent Dubai court, or arbitration if the SPA provides for it; (6) enforcement of any judgment.

Annulment is not termination. Termination ends a valid contract for breach and restores the parties' prior position or, failing that, awards compensation (Article 237). Annulment attacks validity: a sale never entered in the interim register; a sale in an unapproved project, which the implementing bylaw treats as null and void; mistake (Article 161); or deception producing a grossly unfair contract (Article 172), including a broker's deception the developer knew of (Article 176) — unfairness alone is not enough (Article 177). The right lapses if not asserted within one year from the date the law specifies (Article 191). The Civil Transactions Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025) applies from 1 June 2026 and is not retroactive unless it says so, so ask which rules govern an older SPA.

Under Dubai Law No. 8 of 2007 the escrow account is opened in the project's name, dedicated exclusively to its construction, and protected from attachment by the developer's creditors. The escrow agent, a DLD-accredited financial institution, reports regularly to the DLD and, once the completion certificate issues, retains 5% of the account for one year from unit registration — a safeguard on the account, not a defects warranty for buyers.

What you cannot demand is a direct withdrawal: the Law gives a buyer no such right. It does require the escrow agent, if a project is not completed, to take measures to preserve depositors' rights after consulting the DLD, and gives depositors access to the account's records (a lawyer should confirm the scope). Construction-stage drawdown rules sit in regulations and the escrow agreement, not the Law; a lawyer can obtain the escrow position.

The escrow money seems to have gone somewhere else. The implementing bylaw requires brokers to pay unit prices into the project escrow account, not their own accounts, without deducting commission first. Article 16 of Law No. 8 of 2007 provides for a jail sentence and a fine of at least AED 100,000, or either penalty, for unlicensed development, fraudulent projects and misappropriating money delivered for a development project — so a criminal complaint may run alongside the civil claim.

Claims about a Dubai project proven to be unfinished, or subject to a cancellation decision, belong to the Special Tribunal for Unfinished and Cancelled Real Property Projects in the Emirate of Dubai under Decree No. 33 of 2020, which superseded Decree No. 21 of 2013. Other courts must refer such claims to it, its decisions are final and not subject to ordinary appeal, and DIFC projects are excluded. Delay alone is not the test.

Where RERA cancels a project, Article 11 requires a full refund. The implementing bylaw's timetable asks for refunds from escrow within 14 days of cancellation and, if escrow is short, from the developer within 60 days unless RERA extends, after which RERA must act to preserve buyers' rights, including by referral to the judicial authority. Whether that timetable has been amended since 2010 is unconfirmed; if it is not honoured, the Tribunal is the forum.

The Tribunal determines purchasers' rights, liquidates cancelled projects and can assign an unfinished project to another developer. The Decree sets out no claim procedure, distribution order or deadline, and recovery depends on what remains in escrow and on the liquidation of project assets. With no ordinary appeal, prepare the claim carefully with a lawyer who knows the Tribunal.