The costs agents carry themselves

The fees that are fixed and published

These are set by the Dubai Land Department and are the only costs on this page with a figure attached, because they are the only ones published by the body that charges them.

For a real estate broker, the DLD's own service page for issuing a real estate professional practice card lists AED 500 for the card, AED 700 for the exam, AED 10 knowledge fee, AED 10 innovation fee and AED 50 ERES fee. Checked 3 September 2026, and the current figures are on the service page linked at the foot of this article.

Certified training sits alongside those and is charged by the approved provider rather than by the DLD, so it varies between providers and is not a single published government figure. Ask the provider for their current price in writing rather than relying on a total quoted in an article, including this one.

The full breakdown, including what varies and why quoted totals differ, is in the licensing section of this guide.

The firm costs, which are the ones worth negotiating

This group is where the money actually goes, and where the amounts are commercially variable enough that quoting any of them here would be inventing.

Portal exposure and lead costs are usually the largest. Whether the firm buys portal credits centrally, allocates them, or recharges them to agents is a decision each firm makes, and it changes an agent's economics more than several points of split.

Listing marketing sits next to it: photography, videography, floor plans, staging, boosted or featured placements. Ask who commits this spend, whether you are consulted before it is committed, and whether it is recovered from your commission on that transaction or from your earnings generally.

Then the administrative layer. Some firms provide transaction coordination and paperwork support as standard; some charge for it; some provide none, which is a cost in hours rather than money and is the one most often underestimated.

None of these are unreasonable for a firm to recharge. All of them are terms rather than facts, and all of them are worth asking about by name before signing rather than discovering on a first commission statement.

1. 01

   Portal credits and leads

   Usually the largest variable cost. Ask whether they are central, allocated or recharged, and whether the recharge is capped.

2. 02

   Listing marketing

   Photography, video, floor plans, featured placements. Ask who authorises the spend and where it is recovered from.

3. 03

   Administrative support

   Provided, charged, or absent. If absent, it is a cost in your hours rather than in your commission.

4. 04

   Failed transactions

   Ask what happens to costs already incurred when a deal collapses. This is the clause people find out about afterwards.

The personal running costs

These are yours in almost every model and they are consistently underestimated because they arrive gradually rather than as a single invoice.

Transport is the largest for most agents: a car, fuel, parking, tolls, and the maintenance that follows from doing very high mileage across a city. Viewings are not clustered conveniently and the driving is a real, continuous cost.

Then the phone and its bill, which is a working tool in this job rather than a personal item, and the incidental client costs that accumulate quietly.

And the cost people forget entirely: your own time between transactions. In a commission-only arrangement, an unproductive month is not a neutral month, because the fixed costs above continue through it. That is the mechanism by which the cost list, rather than the split, is what ends most first years.

How to establish what you would actually carry

Ask for a written list rather than a conversation, and ask for it before you sign rather than after.

The question that works is specific: on a completed transaction at a typical value for this firm, list every deduction between the commission the agency invoices and the amount that reaches me. Then separately: what do I pay for monthly regardless of whether I transact?

The second question is the one that catches the recurring costs, because deduction-per-transaction lists routinely omit the standing charges.

If a firm cannot produce both lists in writing, that is itself the answer, and it is the same test the section applies everywhere else: a firm confident in its terms will state them.