Off-plan mortgages
You can use a mortgage to buy off plan, but a bank may lend at most half of what the property is worth. You fund the rest yourself.
Short answer
The most a bank may lend is 50% of the value. That is the same for every buyer, whatever the property is for or costs.
The rest comes from you, often before the home is finished. And your bank decides whether it lends on that project at all.
Yes. Buying off plan means buying a home before it is built. The rules allow a bank to lend on it. They just allow much less than on a finished home.
Two things matter more here than on any other purchase. How much the bank may lend is capped at a lower level. And when the bank pays in is not the same as when you pay the developer. Most of this page is about that gap.
If you want to know whether you can borrow at all, and roughly how much, what UAE banks look at covers that first.
At most 50% of its value. The rule applies regardless of purpose, value, or category of purchaser. A first home, a second home, a UAE national, an expatriate: all the same.
It is a Central Bank rule, so it does not change by emirate. An off-plan mortgage in Dubai and one in Abu Dhabi start from the same cap.
The regulation gives its reason. Building takes a long time, and there is a higher risk that the project is never completed. So the rules ask a bank to carry less of that risk.
The cap is a ceiling, not an offer. The regulations set minimum standards, and nothing in them prevents a bank from adopting more conservative limits. Every bank must also hold a board-approved lending policy, setting the most it will lend on each kind of loan.
The limits on a finished home are higher, and they depend on who you are and what the property is worth. How loan to value works sets them all out.
Your developer sets a payment plan. It is a contract between you and the developer, and it says when each part of the price is due. The bank is not a party to it.
The bank’s share is capped. So whatever part of the price the bank does not lend comes from you, whenever the plan asks for it. If the valuation matches the price, that is at least half the price. However the plan spreads it out, it is your money.
This is where off-plan purchases most often run short. A plan can ask for large payments before a bank is willing to pay anything in. Work out where each payment will come from before you sign, not when it falls due.
In Dubai, the money you pay does not simply go to the developer. Payments from off-plan buyers are deposited in an escrow account in the project’s name, and that account is used only to build that project.
There are two points at which a mortgage can come in, and they are not the same arrangement.
The bank pays in before the building is finished. The home does not exist yet, which is exactly the risk to completion the regulation names.
You pay the developer from your own money during the build, and the mortgage covers what is due when the home is finished. By then there is a finished property to value.
Which of these you can get is not set by the rules. It is set by each bank, under its own policy, and it can differ from one project to the next.
A bank’s policy may limit it to developers or projects it has approved. Ask before you pay a booking deposit, not after.
A bank may wait for the build to reach a certain stage, or for you to have paid a certain share yourself. We do not publish a figure, because it is set by each bank.
The 50% cap is the most any bank may lend. Your bank may set its own, lower limit.
Confirm whether a loan taken once the building is finished will be assessed as off plan or as a finished home. We do not assume the answer.
None of this is the bank being difficult. The regulation names the risk that a project is never completed as the reason for the lower cap. A bank that sets conditions on which projects it finances, and when, is managing the same risk.
The limit is not worked out on the price you agreed. Loan to value is the ratio of the loan outstanding to the appraised value of the property.
Before a bank makes a final commitment to lend, an independent on-site valuation must be carried out. The valuer must be independent of you, the seller, the developer or contractor, and the loan decision process. Appraisal reports must not reflect expected future house price appreciation.
Off plan, you agree the price before the home exists. The valuation that counts is the one done when the bank commits to lend, and the longer the gap, the more room there is for the two to differ. If the valuation comes in below the price, the limit is worked on the lower figure, and you cover the gap.
You agree to buy an off-plan apartment for AED 2,000,000.
When the bank commits to lend, the valuer puts it at AED 1,900,000.
The limit is worked on the valuation, so the most that may be lent is 50% of AED 1,900,000 = AED 950,000.
You fund the rest: AED 2,000,000 − AED 950,000 = AED 1,050,000. That is AED 950,000 for the half of the valuation the bank may not lend, plus AED 100,000 because the valuation came in under the price. Registration and bank charges sit on top.
An illustration of how the off-plan cap and the valuation combine. It is not a quote, and not a statement that any bank would finance this project; a bank may lend less than the regulatory maximum, or not lend at all.
The gap between the price and the valuation is the part people do not plan for. It arrives at the end, when most of your own money has already gone to the developer.
Registration is handled by each emirate. This section describes Dubai, where the rules are published in law and on the Land Department’s own service cards.
Dubai keeps two registers. An off-plan sale is entered in the interim registerfirst, before it reaches the Property Register. The developer does this through Oqood, the Land Department’s portal for it.
The developer registers the sale there. The sale and purchase contract must be registered within 90 days of the date it is signed.
A home in the interim register can already carry a mortgage. The law allows a unit sold off plan and entered there to be mortgaged, and the Land Department has a service for the developer to register the sale together with an initial mortgage, backed by a letter from your bank.
What a Dubai purchase involves sets out what the Land Department charges for each of these steps, quoted from its service cards.
This is the risk behind the lower cap, so it is worth knowing what Dubai’s escrow law says.
If a project is not completed, the escrow agent must, after consulting the Land Department, take the steps needed to protect depositors. That means making sure the project is completed, or that depositors are refunded their payments.
That is a protection for the money in the account. It does not decide what happens to your mortgage. If a bank has already paid in, talk to that bank about your loan.
Your share of the price is not the only money you need. Registration, the valuation and bank charges come on top of it.
What cash you need to buy a property in the UAE shows which of those costs CredMe budgets for on an off-plan purchase, and which it leaves out.
There are two sets. The project has to fit your bank’s own rules on off-plan lending, set out above. And you have to pass the same checks as any other buyer. Buying off plan changes the property limit. It does not change you.
Your bank still checks your income and your debts. There is still a ceiling on how much of your income can go to debt repayments, which the debt burden ratio explains. You are held to whichever limit is lowest for you, and on a large purchase that may not be the property limit.
If you live outside the UAE, the rules have no separate category for you. The off-plan cap applies to every buyer. What changes is which banks will lend to you, which what changes for a non-resident buyer covers.
Before the booking deposit. A payment plan you cannot fund is still a contract you signed.
At least half of the valuation, plus any gap below the price, whatever the payment plan says about timing.
A price agreed years before handover can be above what a valuer says the home is worth when the bank commits.
Your income and debts can hold you back before the property limit does.
CredMe works out what you could borrow and which limit is holding you back. That is an initial assessment, not a lending decision. A CredMe Mortgage Consultant goes through it with you before any bank is approached, and the bank underwrites the application and makes the final decision. CredMe is not a bank and cannot approve or decline a mortgage.
Written by CredMe Team
Based on CredMe's mortgage assessment methodology and verified regulatory and government sources
Last reviewed 14 September 2026
The lending limits here come from the Central Bank rulebook. The registration and escrow sections come from Dubai law and Land Department service cards. Each source is listed below with the date it was read. The example uses made-up figures to show how the cap is applied. We do not publish any bank’s conditions for off-plan lending, because each bank sets its own and we have no published source for them.
Indicative guidance only. Not a formal offer of finance and not a lending decision. The off-plan cap is a regulatory maximum; each bank applies its own criteria and decides which projects it finances, and every figure depends on full underwriting by the lender. CredMe is not a bank and cannot approve or decline a mortgage. See our disclaimer.
What loan to value means on a UAE mortgage: what the ratio is measured against, which cap applies to which buyer and property, and why the regulatory maximum is an outer limit rather than an offer.
Getting a mortgage in Dubai: what the Land Department charges to register a sale and a mortgage, what freehold and Oqood mean in practice, and which parts of the process are federal rather than local.
The UAE mortgage regulations contain no non-resident category. What changes when you buy from overseas is which lenders will look at you and on what terms, not the rules themselves.
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