The RERA exam
The exam is the step people worry about most and it is rarely the step that stops them. The fee is published, some applicants are exempt entirely, and there is a separate annual test at renewal that catches practising agents who assumed the exam was a one-off.
The short answer
The Dubai Land Department lists a broker exam fee of AED 700, alongside AED 10 knowledge, AED 10 innovation and AED 50 ERES fees. Exemptions are published and include applicants aged 55 and over and brokers with five consecutive years at the same office. A separate annual test applies at renewal.
- The exam fee
- AED 700, plus AED 10 knowledge, AED 10 innovation and AED 50 ERES. DLD, checked 3 Sept 2026
- Exemptions are published
- Applicants aged 55 and over, brokers with five consecutive years at the same office, and start-up licence holders
- Renewal has its own test
- Passing the annual test for the mediation profession is listed among the conditions for the card
- No question bank here
- We will not publish likely questions. Learn the rules you will practise under, from the approved provider
What it costs and who is exempt
The Dubai Land Department's service page for issuing a real estate professional practice card lists the broker exam at AED 700, with AED 10 knowledge, AED 10 innovation and AED 50 ERES fees alongside it. Checked 3 September 2026.
The training that precedes it is charged separately by the approved provider rather than by the regulator, which is the reason totals quoted elsewhere for the exam vary so widely: many of them are the training fee, the exam fee and VAT combined into a single number without saying so.
The exemptions are the part worth reading before you pay for anything. The DLD lists exemptions from the broker exam, including individuals aged 55 and over, brokers with five consecutive years at the same office, and start-up licence holders.
If you think one of those applies to you, confirm it directly with the DLD rather than with an employer or a training provider, both of whom have a commercial interest in you sitting the exam. The category existing is not the same as it applying to your case, and only the department can tell you which.
What the exam is actually testing
It is a regulatory exam rather than a sales one. Its subject is the framework you will be practising inside: how brokerage is regulated in Dubai, what a broker may and may not do, how transactions and their registration work, and the obligations that attach to holding a card.
We are deliberately not reproducing a syllabus here. The curriculum belongs to the approved training provider, it is revised without announcement, and a list copied into an article is worse than no list at the point it goes out of date, because somebody will have trusted it. Ask your provider for the current outline at the point you book.
We are also not publishing likely questions, and it is worth saying why plainly. A brokerage teaching people to pattern-match their way through a regulatory exam is helping produce agents who hold a card without understanding the rules attached to it. Those rules are the ones that protect the clients they will then advise.
The useful framing is that this exam is not an obstacle between you and the job. It is a summary of the obligations the job carries, and an agent who genuinely knows them has an advantage over the large number who passed and forgot.
How people actually fail it
Rarely through the difficulty of the material, and usually through one of three avoidable things.
Treating the training as attendance rather than study. The course is short and it is a compression of a real regulatory framework. People who sit through it and revise nothing afterwards are relying on recall of a two-day session.
Preparing from the wrong material. Third-party summaries, forum posts and old question sets circulate widely and describe the framework as it was rather than as it is. The regulations change; the summaries are rarely updated by anyone with an obligation to keep them current.
And underestimating the specificity. Much of the content is legal and procedural, where a general grasp of how property works is not enough because the answer depends on the exact rule rather than on what would be reasonable.
None of that requires unusual academic ability. It requires treating a regulatory exam as a regulatory exam rather than as a formality attached to a job offer.
The annual test at renewal, which surprises people
The exam at entry is not the end of the testing, and this is the part practising agents most often discover late.
Among the eligibility conditions the DLD lists for the practice card is having passed the annual test for the mediation profession. In practice that means continuing to hold a card is conditional on a recurring assessment rather than on a one-off pass at the start of a career.
The consequence worth planning for is that renewal is a date with a requirement attached, not an administrative formality, and an agent who lets it lapse has an interruption to their ability to practise rather than a late fee.
Card validity is also linked to the trade licence validity of the firm you are registered under, so your renewal is partly dependent on your employer's own registration being current. That is a reasonable thing to confirm with a firm before joining it, and it is a fair question rather than an impolite one.
Confirm current renewal requirements and timing with the Dubai Land Department directly. This is exactly the kind of detail that changes, and where an article is the wrong authority to rely on.
Where this leads
Questions about this
The ones that come up most often, answered without a pitch.
The Dubai Land Department lists AED 700 for the broker exam, plus AED 10 knowledge, AED 10 innovation and AED 50 ERES fees, checked 3 September 2026. The training course is charged separately by the approved provider, which is why combined totals quoted elsewhere differ so much.
The DLD publishes exemptions including individuals aged 55 and over, brokers with five consecutive years at the same office, and start-up licence holders. Confirm whether one applies to you with the department directly rather than with an employer or a training provider.
Resitting arrangements and any additional fee are set by the Dubai Land Department and by the approved provider, and they are the right people to ask at the point it matters. We are not going to state a rule here that may have changed since it was written.
The DLD lists having passed the annual test for the mediation profession among the conditions attaching to the practice card, so continuing to hold a card involves a recurring requirement rather than only the initial exam. Confirm the current renewal requirements with the department.
We hire agents, so read us accordingly
House Of Orange Real Estate is a licensed Dubai brokerage, ORN 1484735. We publish this because we recruit, and we would rather you put the questions on these pages to us than take our word for anything. If a firm cannot answer them, that is the answer.