Commission not paid
The property regulator will not get your money back. That is the first thing to understand, because it is where most people go first and its own service page rules it out in plain terms. What follows is where the question actually belongs, and what to have ready before you take it there.
The short answer
Unpaid commission is a financial claim, and the Dubai Land Department's complaint service explicitly excludes financial claims and compensation. Whether it belongs with MOHRE as an employment matter or in the courts as a contractual one depends on your arrangement, so establish which you have before escalating, and take advice on material sums.
- Not the regulator
- The Dubai Land Department states its complaint service excludes financial claims, contract-term disputes and compensation
- Possibly employment
- Where commission forms part of employed remuneration, MOHRE is the route for private sector employment disputes
- Possibly contractual
- Where it does not, it is a civil claim rather than a labour one, and that is a legal route
- What decides it
- Your actual contract and how you are engaged. This is the question to put to an adviser first, before filing anything
Why the property regulator will not recover your money
The Dubai Land Department runs a complaint service against real estate companies, it operates under Law No. 16 of 2007, and brokers are explicitly among the parties who may file. It is a real and useful route, and it is not the route to unpaid commission.
The department's own service page sets out what it does not cover, and the exclusions are specific: financial claims, disagreement over the terms of a contract, contract cancellations, and any financial compensation. It also states that complaints older than six months are not accepted.
So the regulator is the place to raise how a firm has behaved. It is not the place to recover what a firm owes. Those are different questions and they have different answers, and conflating them is the most expensive mistake in this whole subject, because it costs the one thing that matters when limitation periods are running.
None of which makes a conduct complaint pointless. If the firm has done something regulated, that is worth raising on its own terms. Just do not expect it to produce a payment.
Employment claim or contractual claim
This is the question everything else depends on, and it is genuinely not obvious.
If you are employed by the brokerage and commission forms part of your remuneration under that employment, the matter sits in employment territory. MOHRE is the first route for private sector employment disputes in the UAE, filing is free, and it is where the process starts rather than the courts.
If your arrangement is not employment in that sense, or if what is owed arises from something other than the employment relationship, it is a civil claim rather than a labour one, and it goes down a legal route instead.
Which of those describes you turns on your actual contract and how you are engaged, not on what the role is called or how the industry usually works. That is precisely why this page does not tell you which you are. It is the first question to put to an adviser, and getting it right determines where you file and what timescales apply to you.
If it is employment
MOHRE is the route for private sector employment disputes. Free to file, and the process starts there rather than in court.
If it is contractual
A civil claim, pursued through the legal route rather than the labour one. Different process, different timescales.
How to tell
Your contract and how you are engaged decide it. Establish this with an adviser before you file anywhere.
What to have ready before you do anything
Every route asks for the same things, and assembling them is useful even if the matter resolves without escalation.
The contract, and specifically the clause covering commission: the split, the event that triggers payment, and the number of days after it. This is the document the entire question turns on, and it is the one most agents discover they never read carefully.
The transaction record. What closed, when it transferred, and what the firm received. Anything showing the deal completed and the money reached the business.
The correspondence. Requests you made and answers you got, with dates. A dated written request is worth more than a much stronger verbal one, which is a good reason to make requests in writing from the start rather than from the point things go wrong.
And a plain written summary of what you say you are owed and how you calculated it. Not for anyone else's benefit initially. Doing the arithmetic explicitly is how people discover either that their case is clearer than it felt, or that the contract says something they had not registered.
Ask before you escalate, if you can
A meaningful proportion of these are process failures rather than refusals. Commission that depends on a transfer, a settlement and an internal approval can stall in any of three places, and the person you are chasing may genuinely not know where it is.
So the first move, where the relationship allows it, is a specific written question: which stage is this payment at, and what date should I expect it. Specific, dated and in writing. That is not an escalation and it does not commit you to anything, but it produces either the payment or a record of the refusal, and both are useful.
Where that fails, or where the relationship has already broken down, the routes above are what remain. What is worth avoiding is the middle ground of repeated verbal chasing over weeks, because it produces no record and it consumes limitation time you may need later.
What this page will not tell you
Whether you are owed the money, how long you have to claim it, or what it will cost to pursue. We are a brokerage, and a brokerage explaining your rights against a brokerage is not a source you should rely on for any of that.
Time limits are strict, they differ by route, and they are set in law rather than by convention. Confirm them with the body that applies to your situation, on the day, and take proper advice if the sum is material.
What we can usefully say, and what is checkable, is where the routes are and which one is closed to you. That is the part most people get wrong, and it is the part that costs the most.
Where this leads
Questions about this
The ones that come up most often, answered without a pitch.
You can raise brokerage conduct with the Dubai Land Department, and brokers may file. But its own service page excludes financial claims, disputes over contract terms and compensation, so it will not recover the money. That question belongs with MOHRE or the courts depending on your arrangement.
Not necessarily, and the difference decides where the claim goes. Where commission forms part of employed remuneration it sits in employment territory; where it does not, it is a contractual matter. Your contract and how you are engaged determine which, and it is worth establishing with an adviser before filing.
Limits are strict, differ by route and are set in law. The Land Department states a six month window for its own conduct service. Employment and civil claims have their own limits. Confirm with the relevant body rather than relying on any article, and do it early.
That depends on your contract, your visa and the sums, which is an adviser's question rather than ours. What is safe either way is to move your chasing into writing and to assemble your documents, because both help whatever you decide.
MOHRE is the free first route for private sector employment disputes. Costs elsewhere, and any court fees, depend on the route and the amount. Confirm the current position with the body itself.
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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.