Real estate CRM pricing in Dubai: what it actually costs (2026)
What a real estate CRM actually costs in Dubai: the parts of the price, what is often charged as an extra, and a worked example with PropSpace's dirham pricing.
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July 8, 2026
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Off-plan accounts for roughly seven in ten Dubai property sales by volume. Ready property makes up most of the balance, and a large handover cycle is steadily adding more stock to it.
The two are not strictly opposites. An off-plan unit can itself be resold before handover, which is why Property Monitor tracks off-plan resales as their own category. But the market generally thinks in two buckets: developer-first sales, and ready or resale stock.
Brokerages often organise the same way, with separate desks and sometimes separate systems. The client rarely does.
The regulatory workflow is different. The customer workflow is not.
Off-plan carries more regulation. Developer agreements, project registration, escrow, Oqood, assignment rules, NOCs, payment plans and their own advertising requirements.
The shape of the sale is unchanged.
A lead arrives. It becomes a contact with a requirement: budget, bedrooms, area, timeline. The requirement gets matched to inventory. Then qualification, negotiation, documents, registration, commission, and the client relationship afterwards.
That sequence runs the same whether the unit exists yet or not. What differs sits in three places.
Where the inventory comes from. Resale inventory is the brokerage's own listings. Off-plan inventory is the developer's project list.
Who pays, and when. On a resale, commission is agreed with the party engaging the brokerage and normally settles around transfer. On a primary off-plan sale the developer normally pays under its agreement with the brokerage. The trigger varies by agreement: booking, SPA, Oqood registration, a set percentage of the buyer's payment plan, or later milestones. Rates are often higher than resale, and some agreements allow clawback if the buyer defaults or cancels.
Which documents. A resale typically involves Form A and Form B, Form F between buyer and seller, and the DLD transfer. An off-plan purchase usually starts with an EOI or reservation, moves to the SPA, and is registered by the developer on the Interim Property Register through Oqood.
Three differences that matter to the CRM. One client.
Inventory
The practical reason off-plan often ends up in a separate system is inventory. A buyer cannot be matched to a project the CRM cannot see.
PropSpace Broker carries more than 1,000 active off-plan projects across the UAE and select international markets, updated continuously and included on every plan at no extra cost. Not an add-on, not a separate subscription, not a feed anyone has to maintain.
A buyer with a two-bedroom requirement in Dubai Marina at AED 2.5 million is matched against ready stock and off-plan projects in the same search, from the same record.
That is worth stating, because PropSpace is better known for the resale side and the off-plan database is often assumed to be an extra.
The gap between the two stages
An off-plan purchase is followed by two or three years of instalments, then completion and handover.
At that point the owner occupies the unit, lets it, holds it or sells it. Two of those four are a further transaction, and by then the original sale is often several years and one or two agents in the past.
A primary sale can become a resale listing or a leasing instruction. Whether it does tends to depend on whether the record survived the intervening years.
How PropSpace holds both stages
One record per client. The same person can be an off-plan buyer, a landlord at handover, a seller later and a buyer again. Contact 360 in PropSpace Broker keeps that against a single contact: their listings, filtered by whether they are owner or tenant, their leads and sources, their deals, viewings, notes and history.
Handover dates against the deal. Expected completion is recorded with the transaction rather than held separately. Those dates move, which is a reason to keep them with the deal rather than in a spreadsheet.
Reminders that outlast the agent. Construction updates, payment dates and handover are all points of contact across a multi-year build. Reminders set against the deal stay with the brokerage rather than with whoever set them.
Commission recorded against the trigger. Off-plan commission can arrive in tranches and, under some developer agreements, can be clawed back. Recording it against what actually pays, rather than in full on the day of sale, keeps the forecast aligned with the cash.
Both sides on one platform. The off-plan database and the sales pipeline sit in PropSpace Broker. If the client becomes a landlord, the lease, renewal and owner reporting run in PropSpace Manager, priced per unit, against the same contact record.
Market context
Off-plan resales fell through 2025, from 33.5% of resale transactions in April to 21.7% in December.
Handovers are now substantial. Cushman & Wakefield Core recorded more than 23,600 residential units handed over in the first half of 2026 and expects around 55,600 for the full year, the highest annual total since 2008. The scheduled pipeline beyond that is considerably larger, though planned completion dates routinely move, so scheduled supply is not the same as actual handovers.
Each of those handovers puts an owner in front of a decision, and a proportion of them become resale or leasing instructions.
Frequently asked questions
Are off-plan and secondary two different sales processes?
The regulatory workflow differs: off-plan adds developer agreements, escrow, Oqood registration and payment plans. The customer workflow does not. Lead, contact, requirement, match, deal, documents, commission is the same sequence either way.
Can an off-plan property be part of the secondary market?
Yes. An off-plan unit can be resold before handover, and those transactions are tracked separately as off-plan resales. The two categories overlap.
Does PropSpace handle off-plan as well as resale?
Yes. More than 1,000 active off-plan projects across the UAE and select international markets are built into PropSpace Broker, updated continuously and included on every plan at no extra cost, so buyers are matched against ready and off-plan stock in the same search.
Who pays the commission on an off-plan sale?
The developer normally pays, under its agreement with the brokerage. On a resale, the brokerage fee is agreed with the party engaging the broker.
When does off-plan commission arrive?
It depends on the developer agreement. Triggers include booking, SPA, Oqood registration or a set percentage of the buyer's payment plan, often in tranches. Some agreements allow clawback if the buyer cancels.
What share of Dubai sales is off-plan?
Roughly seven in ten by volume. Published figures vary with methodology, particularly whether they count volume or value and how developer sales registered as title deeds are treated.
How many handovers are expected in 2026?
Cushman & Wakefield Core recorded over 23,600 units in the first half of 2026 and expects around 55,600 for the year, the highest since 2008.
Market figures current as at September 2026 and drawn from published DLD and agency data. Commission rates and payment terms vary by developer agreement and are described here as market practice rather than published fact.