Checking on an off-plan project, before the developer tells you.

The Land Department tracks every project under construction through a register usually called Mashrooi. The completion percentage on it is the result of the latest approved technical audit, an inspection of the site. The developer does not set it, which is the reason to read it alongside whatever progress update the developer sends.

You can search the project tracking service by project name, by project number or by plot number, and the result gives the percentage and the project's status. Mulki's off-plan trackerreads the same register every day and adds the inspection date and the Department's site photos to each project page.

A percentage means little without its date. We counted the inspections on the register on 8 November 2026: of the 1,558 projects with one recorded, 723 had been inspected in the previous three months. The rest were showing a figure older than that.

The completion date on the register is the one the developer registered, and it can change. RERA reviews project status from time to time and asks developers to update their completion dates. So the register gives you the current target and nothing firmer.

Set against the percentage, though, it tells you a lot. A tower at 25% with a completion date four months away is unlikely to make it. On 8 November, 279 of the 372 projects due within twelve months were less than half built, and 256 had already passed their date. The November construction report breaks those down by community and developer.

The Land Department describes off-plan payment schedules as based on completion rates: so much at one stage, so much at the next, the balance at handover. Its position is that the buyer can ask for a letter from the project's approved consultant confirming the stage has been reached, and is not obliged to pay until it is.

In practice that means checking the register before you pay. If the request says 50% and the latest inspection says 31%, ask for the consultant's letter. Plans that run on calendar dates rather than stages are a different contract, so it matters which one you signed.

Under Law No. 8 of 2007, a developer selling off-plan in Dubai has to open an escrow account for the project, in the project's name, with a bank RERA has approved as trustee. Every payment from buyers goes into it, including what was paid before the account was opened.

RERA watches progress. Where work has stopped or barely moved, it first gives the developer time to put it right. If nothing changes and there is no valid reason for the stoppage, a project with completion still at 5% or below can go into cancellation.

Cancellation hands the project to the Land Department's liquidation section, which moves the escrow balance into a trust account and pays buyers back, fully or in proportion to what is there. The developer is asked to refund buyers within 60 days, with extensions possible. One thing the Department cannot do is end your contract with the developer on your behalf. For a project that has not started, it will mediate, and beyond that the route is the courts.