On 9 September, Dubai developer Reportage published a buyer’s guide with a simple promise. A purchaser ten days into a 10/90 payment plan, it said, now stands in the same position as a cash buyer when applying for the UAE’s ten-year Golden Visa.
Register the off-plan contract, reach AED 2 million (US $545,000) in certified value, obtain a developer no-objection certificate, and residency follows.
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According to the report, off-plan already accounts for most of the transaction activity in Dubai, and industry estimates put Golden Visa-motivated buyers behind roughly 35–40% of off-plan transaction value in 2026.
Dubai Land Department (DLD) figures show 4,218 investors secured residency through real estate purchases in the first quarter of 2026 alone, a 34.7% increase year-on-year.
The timing is not incidental, and it’s been a punishing year for the off-plan market so far. That’s why residency is one of the few incentives a developer can offer that does not come off its margin. The difficulty is establishing whether the promise is sound.
A rule change, then conflict in the Middle East
The outline is consistent across market commentary. The property route previously required applicants to have paid a substantial share of the AED 2 million threshold – typically half – before applying.
A policy circular widely dated to 20 February removed that condition, shifting eligibility to the property’s valuation, with mortgaged and off-plan units said to qualify subject to a lender or developer NOC.
Eight days later, Iran began firing missiles and drones at the UAE in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes. The reform has operated under wartime conditions for all but its first week, which makes its effect on demand impossible to isolate.
What the regulator says
Beyond that outline, accounts diverge. Visa services platform VisaHQ dated the circular to 22 February, and in April described a separate bank-guarantee mechanism. Advisory firm Neo Legal says off-plan eligibility was tightened even as the payment rule was relaxed. No source TSP has reviewed cites a circular reference number.
The Dubai Land Department’s own Golden Visa service page does not reflect the change. It lists a title deed – not an Oqood, the DLD’s provisional register for off-plan sales – among required documents, and asks mortgaged owners for a bank letter stating the amount paid and the balance.
That may be stale copy. When the minimum value for the separate two-year investor visa was removed in April, Khaleej Times reported that the new rules simply appeared on the DLD-affiliated Cube Centre, unannounced.
What happens at the visa counter
Practitioners are less sanguine than developers. Dubai typing centre Sarmat, which says it handles these files weekly, advises that an Oqood registration alone is generally insufficient for the ten-year visa.
Most applicants, it says, need a developer-evidenced payment milestone plus a NOC, or a completed title deed. It reports regular rejections on this point, and warns that an off-plan unit can fall short if the DLD values it below the purchase price.
In fact, in lieu of the numbers of approvals at Oqood stage being officially published by the DLD, anecdotal evidence from conveyancing experts in the country suggest that while “thousands” of applications have been approved since February, the “official position is more nuanced” and therefore inconsistent.
Branford Real Estate, for example, said applications not meeting the 50% down-payment requirement should not be considered to fall under “the blanket rule that every buyer with an AED 2 million property qualifies, regardless of how much has been paid.”
“Practitioners are less sanguine than developers. Dubai typing centre Sarmat, which says it handles these files weekly, advises that an Oqood registration alone is generally insufficient for the ten-year visa”
The market Reportage is addressing has changed shape. DLD figures compiled by DXB Interact show just over 38,000 residential transactions in the second quarter, almost a third below the record set a year earlier, with sales value down nearly 40% to AED 110.4 billion.
Within two weeks of the conflict starting, AGBI reported developers cutting off-plan prices by up to 10%.
Savills puts the fall in new off-plan launches between the first and second quarters at about 90%, but cautions against reading collapse into the numbers. It describes a market normalising rather than correcting, with prices per square foot up 6.5% and off-plan still accounting for three-quarters of sales.
Ziad El Chaar, chief executive of Dar Global, goes further, arguing that buyers globally now want to see far more construction progress before they commit.
Reportage cites a first-quarter rise in residency-linked investors as proof the reform is working. TSP has been unable to trace that figure to a primary source – and a quarter containing the first month of a regional war is a poor test of anything.
Who stays and the handover question
This is not, in the first instance, an ultra-prime story. An AED 2 million threshold sits far below the price of a trophy home on Palm Jumeirah, and principals at that level rarely buy on 10/90 terms. One industry figure told AGBI in April that billionaires simply relocate when conditions deteriorate.
That is the uncomfortable asymmetry. A residency product anchored to a thinly paid off-plan unit binds precisely the buyers with the least capacity to absorb a downturn – and that demand base is already wavering.
Lodha Developers, which sells to Indian buyers from a Dubai office, reported “subdued sentiment”, according to chief executive Abhishek Lodha. He told the company’s quarterly earnings call the impact on demand had been moderate so far, however.
“Uncertainty abroad is and will cause NRIs to want to secure a home base in India,” he continued, saying some non-resident Indians are redirecting capital home. Consultancy Anarock says first-time and middle-income buyers are the most likely to switch.
The pressure point is completion. Savills recorded around 27,000 completed homes in Dubai in the second quarter, a five-year high and nearly four times the first-quarter figure. Every handover is the moment a 10/90 buyer must find the remaining 90%.
“Residency on a deposit may well be Dubai's new reality. For now, it appears the market is selling it with more confidence than the regulator has put in writing”
No public document says what happens to a ten-year visa granted on a 10% deposit when that payment is not made. Guidance on selling a qualifying property suggests residency lapses without prompt reinvestment. Guidance on defaulting on one does not appear to exist.
Residency on a deposit may well be Dubai’s new reality. For now, the market is selling it with more confidence than the regulator has put in writing. Whether the same market rises to meet that confidence remains to be seen.
