September 18 - 2008 (Source: AME Info)
Alexis Waller, Partner in legal firm Clyde & Co’s real estate department, explains why the emirate’s new property laws 13 and 14 mark a new point in the city’s bid to increase regulation and transparency, and why investors should see the benefits.
Over the course of the past 18 months Dubai has pushed through a number of new legislative initiatives covering the city’s real estate sector.
This has served to increase transparency in the emirate’s property market and give direction to a sector that had been perceived as being unclear, and therefore higher risk, by outside investors.
The initiatives that have been put through include the creation of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Rera), which has undertaken to cover all aspects of the property market, including the creation of a price index for different types of property across the emirate.
More recently, in 2008, Laws 13 and 14 covering the registration of offplan property sale contracts and mortgages were also passed, legislating on pre-existing units, as was the Strata Law, which directly affects the owners of completed units.
‘We’re still waiting for the exact regulations from the Strata Law, although it was released in April,’ says Waller. ‘We’re also looking for the guidelines and the actual practice of the pre-registration and mortgage laws. Further laws on written guidelines aren’t going to be issued, so you have to ask questions as they come up and then a ruling on that point is issued.’
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