Alongside the percentage-based charges, every Dubai transfer carries a set of small fixed administrative fees. Individually minor, they are mandatory, and they are usually bundled into the trustee office’s invoice on the day of transfer.
The title deed fee covers issuance of the deed in the new owner’s name — the DLD’s official evidence of registered ownership. The map fee depends on the asset: apartments and villas take the AED 250 building and unit map, while land parcels take the unified map at AED 225 inside Dubai Municipality’s jurisdiction or AED 100 outside it.
The knowledge and innovation fees are Dubai-government levies of AED 10 each, applied per fee and per drawing respectively across DLD services. Because they attach to each chargeable item in a transaction rather than to the transaction as a whole, the exact total varies with the number of fee lines — a straightforward apartment transfer typically incurs AED 20–40 across the two levies.
All charges on this page are DLD government fees and are VAT-exempt. The only VAT-carrying item in a standard transfer is the trustee office fee, a private service charge. For how these fixed charges combine with the 4% transfer fee and mortgage costs in real transactions, see the worked examples.