RERA forms in Dubai: Form A, B, F, I and U explained

Which RERA forms does DLD currently document for property sales?

Three lettered smart contracts: A, B and F. Dubai Land Department's Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide, second edition, November 2024, groups them under a section headed "Smart marketing and sales contracts (A, B, F)".

Many guides still describe five: A, B, F, I and U. Forms I and U do not appear in DLD's current brokerage practice guide. That is not proof they have ceased to exist, and it does not mean nobody uses them. It means their present status cannot be established from DLD's current published guidance.

Leasing has its own paperwork, covered further down, so "three" is the answer for sales rather than a total count of everything DLD publishes.

What is the status of RERA Forms A, B, F, I and U in 2026?

Form A sits between the seller and the brokerage. It appoints the brokerage to market the property. Current DLD smart contract.

Form B sits between the buyer and broker. It records the buyer's appointment and requirements. Current DLD smart contract.

Form F sits between the seller and buyer. It is the sale agreement. Current DLD smart contract.

Form I sits between broker and broker, an agent-to-agent co-brokerage agreement. A historical RERA form, DLD-attributed, whose current workflow status is undocumented.

Form U is served by the party ending an agreement. It is a notice of termination. A legacy form that appears superseded by the in-app Cancel function, though never formally withdrawn.

The guide's reference is DLD/RERA/RL/LP/Manual/No.6/Vr.2, and it is still the current edition.

What is Form A?

The agreement that lets a brokerage market a property. DLD calls it "an agreement to market a property between the seller and the real estate brokerage".

It is created in Dubai Brokers, not on paper. The broker enters the title deed, the property and owner details, the commission terms and the agreement duration, uploads an owner-signed NOC, and submits it. A link goes to the owner, who approves at their end.

For ready properties marketed for sale, Form A is also what the advertising permit hangs off. No approved Form A, no permit, no advertisement.

The three-broker limit. Since 1 October 2022 a property can carry three active Form A agreements at most, so a seller can instruct three brokerages or one exclusively. It is widely reported as coming from a DLD circular and is reflected in listing-system rules, though we could not surface the circular itself in DLD's public archive. There is no numerical cap anywhere in the brokerage bylaw, so treat it as an operational rule rather than a statutory one.

What is Form B?

The buyer-side equivalent. DLD defines it as "an agreement of desire to purchase a property between the buyer and the real estate broker".

It records the appointment, what the buyer is looking for and the commission terms. Purchase-oriented, so it is not what you use to engage a broker for a rental.

What is Form F?

The sale contract between seller and buyer, often called the MOU. DLD's wording: "an agreement to sell a property between the seller and the buyer".

Here is where most guides overstate things. They say Form F is created by linking Form A and Form B, full stop.

DLD's own published Contract F journey shows a more nuanced workflow. The broker opens an approved Contract A and selects "Create Unified Sale Contract (F)". Step 8 is headed "Choose Contract B relation option", and the screenshot in DLD's document shows three buttons: Enter contract B Number, Select from my contracts, and Add Buyer.

So Form A is the starting point for Contract F, but linking an existing Contract B is not the only route DLD's published workflow displays. Describing A, B and F as a compulsory three-contract chain for every brokered sale therefore goes further than the document itself does. Parties can add their own terms as long as those don't conflict with the standard clauses.

What about Form I?

Form I is the agent-to-agent agreement, used when two brokerages work a deal together and need the commission split on paper.

It is a documented RERA form. Lexis Middle East carries an entry titled "RERA Form I - Agent to Agent Agreement" and attributes it to Dubai Land Department.

Whether it is still part of the workflow, we could not establish. The 2024 practice guide doesn't mention it. We found no DLD circular or system documentation from 2024 to 2026 that references a Form I step. Market guidance still describes it as in use, and co-brokerage obviously still happens and still needs documenting. But "the market still describes it as in use" and "DLD still requires it" are different claims. We found support for the first, not the second.

Document your splits in writing either way. Ask DLD if you need to know which instrument they expect.

How do you end a brokerage agreement, and what happened to Form U?

Three routes, and none of them is a form.

Cancel it yourself. An owner can cancel a Contract A in Dubai REST without the broker's involvement. Two paths: Owned Properties, select the property, Services, Brokerage Contracts, select the agent, Cancel. Or use DLD's Find Broker Contract service, entering the contract number and the registered mobile number and verifying by OTP. DLD's own guide puts it plainly: "You can view the contract details and can either Download the contract or Cancel it."

The broker cancels. The same Cancel action sits on the Contract A screen in Dubai Brokers, alongside Extend, Edit and Download.

Let it lapse. Contract A carries a duration set when the broker creates it, and it ends automatically unless someone uses Extend. Market guidance commonly cites a maximum of around 90 days, with exclusive mandates running 90 to 180 days, though we could not find those figures in a DLD document. If you can wait, doing nothing works.

There is no DLD fee for any of this. DLD's FAQ states that "there are no fees when applying for a cancellation from the Real Estate Regulatory Agency". Do not confuse it with DLD's Contract cancellation application, which costs AED 1,000 plus fees and exists to unwind a registered sale, mortgage or lease-to-own contract on a court order. Different service entirely.

Cancelling does not cancel the commission

This is the part that catches people out, and it is the reason to read the termination clause before pressing Cancel.

Article 29 of Bylaw 85 says: "If the Brokerage Agreement is terminated, the Real Estate Broker will be entitled to claim his remuneration as agreed in the Brokerage Agreement, except where he is proven to have committed fraud or gross negligence."

Article 32 adds that where several brokers are appointed separately on the same matter, whichever one concludes the deal takes the full fee.

So ending the appointment is easy and ending the entitlement is not. If a broker has already introduced the buyer who eventually purchases, cancelling the Form A does not by itself defeat their claim. That exposure is sharpest on an exclusive mandate.

If the broker keeps advertising

Check the Trakheesi permit is dead, then file through DLD's Real Estate Violation System, which quotes five working days. That route covers misconduct only. DLD states it "is not concerned with considering complaints related to the cancellation of contracts, reservations, or any financial compensation", so commission and contractual disputes go to the courts or to DLD's separate contractual-disputes channel.

Which leaves Form U

A document widely circulated as RERA Form U is a termination notice for ending lettered brokerage agreements, and the copies in circulation state a minimum notice period of seven days. Market guidance still presents it as the formal way out, and several guides go further and call it the only legally accepted route.

We could not find it on any DLD domain or in an official archive. It appears in none of DLD's current material: not the 2024 practice guide, not the Broker's Journey documents, not the Find Broker Contract guide. Neither Al Tamimi nor Addleshaw Goddard mention it in their brokerage commentary.

So Form U looks functionally superseded rather than formally withdrawn. It belongs to the paper framework that predates the 2014 unified contracts and the 2017 move to mandatory electronic contracts, and it survives in market guidance largely because guides copy each other. We found no circular retiring it, so we are not going to say it was abolished.

One gap remains. No DLD document states what the Cancel action actually requires: whether it asks for a reason, whether the other side is notified or has to agree, or whether any notice period is enforced. Worth knowing that cancelling a Form F does require both buyer and seller to approve, so behaviour differs by contract type. Serving a short dated written notice alongside the system action costs nothing and is worth doing, particularly on an exclusive mandate.

Was the lettered framework once bigger than five?

Almost certainly, and nobody seems to have written it down.

The circulating Form U carries a section listing which agreement is being terminated, and the options run well past A, B, F and I. Twelve letters appear: A, A1, B, B1, D, D1, F, G, H, I, P1 and S1. The same copy states a seven-day minimum notice period.

Separate readings of copies in circulation return the same twelve, which is reasonable evidence the list is stable. What we could not do is verify any copy against an official or archived-official source, so the provenance stays unconfirmed. And there appears to be no authoritative index of historical RERA lettered forms anywhere in public, which means most of those letters cannot be explained at all. We are not going to guess at definitions for forms we cannot document.

We did try to decode them, and the attempt is instructive. Published sources contradict each other. One describes A1 as the seller's-agent version of Form A. Another says A1 was a renewal of an existing Form A. A third says A2 was the rental counterpart to Form A. These are agency guides and training material, none authoritative, and they cannot all be right.

That disagreement is the real finding. The letters are not merely undocumented, they are actively misdescribed, and the misdescriptions are what the market now repeats back to itself. A search for any of these letters also collides with India's RERA regime, which uses its own alphabetical forms, so the results get worse rather than better the harder you look.

So the familiar five-form explanation is not a historical list. It is the handful of forms that survived in market memory after a larger paper framework was absorbed into Dubai Brokers, plus a layer of guesswork about the rest.

Leasing works differently

Forms A and B sit within the sales framework. Leasing has separate paperwork.

DLD publishes two leasing brokerage agreements, both dated 25 August 2022, one between owner and broker and one between broker and tenant. There is also a Property Viewing Agreement.

Separately, a 2022 DLD circular links real estate permits to the e-marketing contract, Form A, in the context of a marketing agreement between broker and seller. DLD's current advertising permit service requires a marketing contract with the property owner for many permit categories, but the public page does not label the rental-side agreement Form A. So the leasing paperwork is not the sales framework with different names, and Ejari registration sits on top of it again.

Two things the standard explanation gets wrong

The wrong article

Brokerage agreements sit under Bylaw No. 85 of 2006, regulating the real estate brokers register in Dubai. A lot of commentary attributes the writing-and-registration requirement to Article 28.

It is Article 26: "A Brokerage Agreement must be in writing and must state the names of the contracting parties, the specifications of the Real Property, and the brokerage terms. The Brokerage Agreement will be entered into the record of the Real Property Register."

Article 28 covers something different, namely when a broker becomes entitled to remuneration. It ties that to a contract actually being concluded and, unless the brokerage agreement says otherwise, to the sale contract being signed and registered.

The bylaw was issued on 30 May 2006 and we found nothing repealing or amending either article.

The case law has moved

The familiar line is that an unregistered brokerage agreement is void and the broker gets nothing. That is no longer safe as a summary.

A Dubai Court of Appeal judgment of 22 December 2022 treated an unregistered agreement as null and threw out the broker's claim. A Court of Cassation judgment of 9 May 2024 went the other way, holding that non-registration is administrative and that the law doesn't clearly say failure to register nullifies the agreement. A Court of Appeal judgment of 7 August 2024 reasoned similarly, pointing out that the bylaw provides disciplinary penalties rather than invalidity. Al Tamimi separately reports a Cassation decision emphasising that a brokerage contract has to be registered to found a commission claim, though that article dates from 2011, so it is the older position rather than a competing recent one.

Weight matters. The 9 May 2024 decision came from the Court of Cassation, which sits above the Court of Appeal, and it points firmly towards non-registration being an administrative breach rather than something that voids the agreement. BSA, reporting it, expected the onshore courts to follow. What stops us calling it settled is that all of this comes from published commentary rather than judgment texts, and none of it carries a case number.

Register the agreement anyway.

Advertising permits, briefly

You cannot advertise a Dubai property through permit-requiring channels without a Trakheesi permit, and the permit number has to appear on the advertisement.

DLD's advertising permit service lists fourteen categories. As at August 2026 DLD lists AED 5,000 for a project launch event permit and AED 1,000 for other permits, together with a AED 20 knowledge and innovation fee. Fees change, so check the service page rather than an article.

Since 24 April 2023 print and audiovisual advertisements have also needed a Madmoun QR code, issued through Trakheesi, so anyone can verify a listing is approved. Watch the spelling: Dubai's Madmoun is a different system from Abu Dhabi's Madhmoun, and we cover how the two differ separately.

What this means for your paperwork

A, B and F are DLD's three current smart sales contracts, but they are not necessarily a compulsory A to B to F chain. Form A is the seller-side marketing agreement and the starting point for Contract F. Form B is the buyer-side appointment. DLD's published F workflow lets an existing B be linked, but also offers an Add Buyer route.

Form I is a documented historical RERA form whose current workflow status is unclear. Form U appears superseded: cancellation is now an action inside Dubai REST rather than a separate notice. Keep documenting co-brokerage in writing, and cancel through the system rather than assuming the older paper process still stands.

Leasing is a separate chain. Don't reach for a sales form because the letters look familiar.

None of this is a software problem, but expiry dates are. Permit numbers and their expiry attached to the listing, brokerage agreement dates tracked against the property, lease and renewal dates on the management side. PropSpace generates Form A, Form B and Form F from the deal record and covers both the brokerage and property management sides.

General information, not legal advice, and current as at August 2026. For a specific transaction or a commission dispute, take advice from a UAE-qualified lawyer and confirm requirements with DLD.

Frequently asked questions

How many RERA forms are there?

There isn't a reliable current total for the old lettered framework. DLD's current brokerage guidance documents three smart sales contracts: A, B and F. Historical material shows the lettered framework was once considerably larger, and Forms I and U still appear throughout market guidance. So the commonly repeated answer of five is neither a complete historical count nor an accurate description of DLD's current digital workflow.

What is the difference between Form A and Form B?

Form A is between the seller and the brokerage and authorises the brokerage to market the property. Form B is between the buyer and their broker and records the appointment and requirements.

What is Form F in Dubai property?

The sale agreement between seller and buyer, sometimes called the MOU. DLD's published workflow starts from an approved Contract A. At the Contract B relation step the broker can enter a Contract B number, select an existing contract, or use Add Buyer, so DLD's published workflow does not require the broker to select an existing Form B at that step.

Is Form I still required for co-brokerage?

Form I is a documented RERA agent-to-agent agreement, attributed to DLD by Lexis Middle East. DLD's 2024 practice guide doesn't mention it and no current DLD source confirms it is still required. Document the split in writing and ask DLD which instrument they expect.

How do I cancel a Form A?

In the app, and you do not need the broker's cooperation. In Dubai REST, either go to Owned Properties, select the property, Services, Brokerage Contracts, select the agent and Cancel, or use Find Broker Contract with the contract number and registered mobile number. The broker has the same Cancel action in Dubai Brokers. There is no DLD fee. The older Form U termination notice appears superseded by that function, though we found no circular formally withdrawing it.

Does cancelling a Form A cancel the broker's commission?

No. Article 29 of Bylaw 85 of 2006 says a broker whose agreement is terminated can still claim the remuneration agreed in that agreement, unless fraud or gross negligence is proven. Article 32 gives the full fee to whichever separately appointed broker actually concludes the deal. If a broker introduced the buyer who eventually purchases, cancelling the appointment does not by itself end their claim.

Is there a Form E?

We found no evidence of one in the Dubai brokerage context. That is an absence of evidence rather than proof it never existed.

How many brokers can I list my property with?

The widely reported DLD rule effective from 1 October 2022 limits a property to three brokers, each with their own Form A, unless one brokerage is appointed exclusively. We could not locate the underlying circular in DLD's current public archive.

Does a brokerage agreement have to be registered?

Article 26 of Bylaw 85 of 2006 requires it to be in writing and entered into the property register. Recent reported decisions, including a 2024 Court of Cassation judgment, suggest non-registration may be treated as administrative rather than fatal, but the position isn't settled. Register it.