SPA, Oqood and Title Deed: The Three Documents in a Dubai Purchase

An off-plan purchase in Dubai produces three documents that people routinely confuse, partly because two of them arrive long before the third. Knowing which does what tells you what you actually hold at any point between a booking form and a set of keys.

The Sale and Purchase Agreement

The SPA is the contract between you and the developer. It carries the unit, its area, the price, the payment schedule, the completion date and — the part worth reading first — what happens if that date moves. It is the document that binds both sides, and it is the only one of the three whose terms are negotiable at all.

Read the delay clause before the specification. A specification tells you what a home should be like; a delay clause tells you what you can do if it is not there on time, and one of those questions has a legal answer.

Oqood

Oqood is the Dubai Land Department's register of off-plan sales. Your purchase is registered on it immediately on booking completion, by paying the down payment and signing the SPA, and your ownership documents are accessible online. That is what stands between you and a unit sold twice, and it is why registration is not a formality to be done later.

It sits alongside the escrow account, which is the other protection off-plan buyers have: a RERA-regulated account holding buyers' payments for one project, from which money is released to the developer against verified construction progress rather than on request. Escrow governs where the money sits. Oqood governs whose name the unit is against. Neither guarantees a completion date.

The Title Deed

The title deed is the Land Department document naming you as owner. On an off-plan purchase it is issued after handover and final payment, which can be years after the SPA. Until it exists, Oqood is the record of your interest — which is precisely why the gap between them matters and why the registration is worth confirming rather than assuming.

The Order, and the Gaps

Booking form, SPA, Oqood registration, construction, handover, final payment, title deed. The long gap is between Oqood and handover, and it is the stretch in which a buyer holds a contract and a register entry rather than a home. What makes that stretch tolerable is not optimism about the market. It is a developer with a record of handing over in the quarter it published, which is a thing you can ask for and check.