Who Is Legally Allowed to Manage Property in Dubai?

The company license, the AED 5 million bank guarantee, the individual practice card every broker and manager must hold, and the free, immediate way to check whether the person managing your property is actually licensed.

Search "property management company Dubai" and hundreds of firms compete for the same owners. Almost none of the pages selling their services explain, in plain terms, what actually makes a manager or a broker legal to operate in the first place.

The answer sits in two Dubai Land Department (DLD) systems most owners have never opened: the real estate activity license, held by the company, and the real estate activity practice card, held by the individual doing the work. Neither is optional, and DLD's own wording is unambiguous.

Who is legally allowed to manage property in Dubai?

A person or company may only carry out a licensed real estate activity — including leasing and managing property on someone else's behalf — after obtaining a company license for that activity and, for every individual who practices it, a real estate activity practice card. DLD states the rule directly: "No person shall have the right to practice the activity registered in the license except after registering and obtaining the card designated for the type of activity."

Both the company license and the individual card are issued through DLD's Trakheesi system, with applications submitted directly or via the Invest in Dubai platform (Dubai Land Department, verified 26 September 2026).

That framework covers company-appointed managers and brokers. It does not extend to an owner managing their own single unit — the licensing requirement attaches to carrying out the activity for someone else. The moment a third party is paying you, or paying your company, to lease or manage on their behalf, the license and the card both apply.

What license does a property management company need?

DLD licenses 21 real estate activity categories in total, including sales and purchase brokerage, mortgage consultancy, development, valuation and property management. The activity relevant to a firm managing units for owners is "real estate leasing and management services for others," and it carries its own annual fee separate from the other categories.

• Real estate leasing and management services for others — AED 15,000 annual fee
• Administrative supervision services for owners' associations — AED 10,000 annual fee
• Real estate valuation services — AED 10,000 annual fee
• Real estate development activity — AED 25,000 annual fee
• Real estate registrar trustee activity — AED 100,000 annual fee

Every category also carries a flat AED 20 knowledge-and-innovation fee on top of the activity fee. Processing time for the license application itself is one working day (Dubai Land Department, Real Estate Licensing Application, verified 26 September 2026).

What does the AED 5 million bank guarantee actually require?

A company applying for the third-party leasing and management license must provide a bank guarantee of AED 5 million. A branch of that company must also trade under a matching name and employ at least 20 administrative staff.

That is a genuine barrier to entry, and it is worth an owner knowing it exists. A firm that holds this license has put up eight-figure collateral and a real headcount to be allowed to manage other people's property at all — which is a materially different commitment from a broker who simply lists units on a portal.

Do individual staff need their own license too?

Yes. The company license covers the firm; it does not cover the person standing in your living room. Anyone practising a licensed activity — brokers, mediation agents, consultants, evaluators and registrars are all named — must separately register and hold the practice card for that specific activity before doing the work.

The card's validity is tied to the validity of the underlying trade license, so it lapses if the company's license lapses. An owner dealing with an individual is, in effect, relying on two things staying current at once: the company's license and that person's own card — and a license renewal that slips by even a few days quietly takes every attached card down with it, which is precisely the kind of gap the free verification lookup below is designed to catch.

How do you get a Real Estate Activity Practice Card?

An applicant needs a certificate of good conduct from Dubai Police, and — for brokerage roles — must have passed the annual test to practise the mediation profession. Required documents are a personal photograph, a copy of the Emirates ID, and an experience certificate.

Fees range from AED 500 for most card types up to AED 5,000 for a real estate evaluator card, plus a flat AED 10 knowledge fee and AED 10 innovation fee. Processing, once the application is submitted through Trakheesi, takes five minutes, with payment by credit card, e-dirham or the Noqodi wallet (Dubai Land Department, Real Estate Activity Practice Card, verified 26 September 2026).

Evaluator roles carry an additional experience bar — two years for UAE nationals, five years for expatriates — and a trainee evaluator must complete one year at an office approved by RERA before qualifying.

Who is exempt from the broker exam?

DLD's own exemption list is narrower than most agents assume. It covers applicants over 55 years of age, brokers who have worked five or more consecutive years at the same firm, and holders of a startup license. Everyone outside those three categories sits the annual mediation-profession test before a card is issued.

How can you verify a broker or company is actually licensed?

DLD publishes a free "Licensed Real Estate Brokers" lookup, available on the DLD website and the Dubai REST app, open to any residency status and returning a result immediately.

There is no fee and no account needed for this step, which is exactly what makes skipping it hard to justify.

What happens if you use an unlicensed manager or broker?

DLD has not published a specific fine schedule for individual unlicensed practice, so this article will not invent one — a claim without a primary source is worse than no claim at all. What is verifiable is simpler and arguably more useful: someone practising without the matching card falls entirely outside the framework DLD describes above. There is no license number to escalate a complaint against, no RERA registration behind the person collecting your rent, and nothing that will show up when you run the free check.

Because that check costs nothing and takes seconds, the practical safeguard is not a legal one — it is simply doing it before you hand anyone the keys. Ask for the person's name and the company's trade name, run both through the lookup, and treat "not found" the same way you would treat a landlord who refuses to show you the title deed.

How PropertyPad handles this

PropertyPad records the licensed manager of record against each property, alongside that manager's practice card and its expiry, so a lapsed license or card shows up as a flag rather than a surprise. It sits next to the same compliance picture as Ejari status and service charge approvals, rather than in a separate spreadsheet nobody checks.

See what PropertyPad does across leasing, licensing and compliance tracking. Ejari's own online registration channel requires the registering company to hold a licensed property management activity in the first place — the workflow is set out in Ejari renewal in Dubai, and it assumes the licensing question on this page is already settled.