Buyer Goes Direct in Dubai: What the Broker Can Claim

The viewings are done and the buyer has gone quiet. Three weeks later the transfer appears on the register, same unit, same buyer, no broker on the file. Somewhere between the second viewing and the transfer counter the two of them decided they did not need you.

A buyer who goes direct in Dubai has not breached the Bylaw, which regulates brokers rather than the parties they introduce. What he has done is move the question from your invoice to your paperwork. Bylaw No. 85 of 2006 Regulating the Real Estate Brokers Register in the Emirate of Dubai decides what is left. The answer depends almost entirely on which document was signed before the introduction.

Entitlement Follows the Concluded Contract

Article 28 sets the rule. A broker is not entitled to a fee unless his brokerage resulted in a contract. Entitlement arises on the signing of the sale contract and its registration unless the brokerage agreement says otherwise. Article 30 states the same thing from the other side. Where the broker's work did not lead to a contract being signed between the two parties, there is no claim for the fee, for compensation or for expenses.

Read those two together and the position on a direct deal becomes clear enough. The deal was concluded, so Article 30 is not the obstacle it is in a collapsed transaction. The live question is whether it was the brokerage that resulted in it. That is a question of causation, proved by the record of the introduction rather than by how unfair the outcome feels.

Which is why these files are usually decided by what the broker can produce from before the parties met, not by what happened afterwards.

The Clause Article 30 Invites You to Write

Article 30 ends with a qualification most brokers have never used: unless the brokerage contract provides otherwise.

The Bylaw is telling you that the default is not fixed. An agreement may create an entitlement that the default position would not give. A term dealing with what happens if the parties conclude directly after an introduction is exactly the kind of term that sentence contemplates. It is permitted by the Bylaw rather than a device working around it.

Article 27 is a separate point that often gets merged into this one. Remuneration is determined by agreement and, where there is no agreement, according to prevailing practice. A mandate that already records two percent has therefore settled the amount. Custom does not come into it. What it has not settled is entitlement. Article 28 decides that question, which a mandate silent on a direct conclusion leaves to be argued on causation alone.

Who Actually Owes You the Money

Article 33 answers the question brokers ask last and should ask first. Remuneration is payable by the party who authorised the broker to conclude the transaction. Where both parties authorised him, each is individually liable for its own share even if they agreed between themselves that one of them would pay everything.

Apply that to a circumvented deal and the shape of the claim changes depending on the form on file.

A broker holding a Form B signed by the buyer has a contractual relationship with the buyer. If that buyer closes directly with the seller, the claim runs against the buyer under the agreement he signed. A broker holding only a Form A signed by the owner is in the opposite position. The buyer never authorised him, so there is no fee owed by the buyer under Article 33. The claim lies against the owner who did sign.

Brokers routinely bring the claim against whichever party behaved worse. The Bylaw points it at whoever signed.

Where the Mandate Was Cancelled First

The more deliberate version of this is the owner who cancels the mandate and closes with the introduced buyer a month later.

Article 29 addresses that directly. Where the brokerage agreement is revoked, the broker may still claim his remuneration in accordance with that agreement, unless he is proven to have committed deception or a serious error. Cancelling the mandate does not by itself cancel the fee.

Expiry is a different event. Article 29 speaks to revocation, so an agreement that simply runs to its end date and is not renewed sits outside that provision. That does not close the claim on the expiry date. Article 28 ties entitlement to the brokerage having resulted in the contract and does not require the sale to be registered while the mandate is still running, so a buyer introduced during the term who completes shortly after it is a causation argument rather than a closed door.

What an expired mandate removes is the straightforward version of the claim. Wording covering introductions made during the term puts the broker back on the document instead of on the argument.

The Party Who Never Signed Anything

Where the person who went around the broker is not his client at all, the Bylaw gives no fee, because Article 33 ties the fee to authorisation. What is left is an exceptional route rather than the usual one. It runs through the harmful act provisions of the Civil Transactions Law rather than through the brokerage agreement.

Article 246 obliges a person who causes harm to another to compensate for it. Article 247 makes a person who deceives another jointly liable for the harm resulting from the deception. Article 253 allows a court to apportion liability among several people responsible for the same harm or to impose it jointly. Article 106 deals separately with the exercise of a right in an unlawful manner.

Knowing that a broker was involved and then contracting directly is not by itself a harmful act. A claim of this kind needs conduct that is wrongful in its own right, such as deception, together with causation and a loss that can be quantified. Most files of this type do not reach that standard, which is the reason the answer belongs in the mandate rather than in a claim against a stranger to it. Those numbers come from Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025, in force since 1 June 2026. Article 4 of that law provides that it does not apply retroactively to preceding facts and acts, so conduct before that date is assessed under the old code and its different numbering.

A File That Turns on the Transfer Record

An agent runs four viewings on a villa for a buyer over three weeks. There is a Form B, a listing permit and a dated viewing log. The buyer stops responding. Nine weeks later the transfer is registered to that buyer at a price slightly below the last figure discussed, with no brokerage recorded on the transaction.

The gap between the last viewing and the transfer is the first thing worth looking at, because the shorter it is the harder the coincidence becomes to explain. When a matter of this kind reaches me as a Legal Consultant, the assessment starts with six things:

1. Which form was signed, who signed it and whether it was registered
2. What the agreement says about a transaction concluded directly between the parties
3. The commission figure recorded in the agreement, if there is one
4. Whether the mandate was still running on the transfer date, then whether it was cancelled or expired
5. The dated record placing the introduced party at that specific unit
6. The transfer record itself: the date, the parties and the price against the last figure under discussion

Most brokers treat the introduction as the moment the money is secured. Under Article 28 it is the moment the risk begins. That risk stays open until the transaction is concluded and registered. The brokers who recover in these files are not the ones who were treated worst. They are the ones whose mandate already said what happens if the parties decide to finish the deal without them.

The practice area page goes further into how broker disputes in Dubai are assessed.