Off-plan and ready: what the status on each card means
Off-plan means the unit is sold before the building is finished: you sign with the developer, pay against construction milestones and take keys at handover. Ready means the building is complete and registered — you inspect the actual apartment, and the transfer happens once payment clears. The Opus residences by OMNIYAT, in Business Bay, Dubai, is complete and occupied, and so are One at Palm Jumeirah and The Lana Residences; everything else in this listing is under construction. The practical difference is inspection and time: with a ready unit you see exactly what you are buying, with an off-plan unit you are buying a floor plan and a delivery date.
Handover in 2026, 2027, 2028 — and 2029
Handover year is the filter most buyers use, so each card shows the year the developer states for that tower, not a catalogue average. The residential towers on Palm Jumeirah and at Marasi Bay are spread across 2026 to 2028; the latest date in the catalogue is 2029, for the offices of LUMENA ALTA in Business Bay. Dates do move when a developer revises them; the card is then corrected rather than left standing as a marketing line, and nothing here is advertised with an earlier date than the developer's own document.
Payment plans, escrow and the money that is not the price
Payment terms are fixed per tower and printed in the sales offer, not improvised per buyer. The usual OMNIYAT shape is a reservation deposit, a larger instalment on the sale and purchase agreement, two staged payments during construction and the balance at completion; the exact split comes from that tower's current document. Nothing in this catalogue is sold with zero down payment, and post-handover instalments exist only where the developer has published them. On off-plan sales the buyer's money goes into a project escrow account at a bank under Law No. 8 of 2007 and is released to the developer against construction progress verified by an appointed consultant, with the final tranche held for up to a year after handover; the mechanism is set out in full in our guide for foreign buyers. Beyond the price itself you pay the Dubai Land Department transfer fee of 4% — the 2013 resolution splits it between seller and buyer, but the Dubai market puts the whole of it on the buyer — plus a fixed registration charge of a few thousand dirham, and after handover an annual service charge per square foot, materially higher in a Dorchester Collection building than in a standard tower, alongside the 5% municipality housing fee collected through the DEWA bill. Homes carry no VAT; the office floors in LUMENA, LUMENA ALTA and ENARA are commercial property, where 5% VAT applies.
Reading the results: filters, currency and prices on request
Of 217 units in the catalogue, 28 show a figure — from AED 4 170 671 to AED 150 000 000, median AED 10 872 463. The rest are marked price on request, which is the developer's decision rather than a gap on our side; the card still gives tower, area, layout and handover, and the figure comes back from the developer's sheet with its date. Filters cover bedrooms, unit type, district, handover year, view, distance to the beach and price in dirhams, dollars, euro or roubles; prices on every card carry a dollar figure beside the dirham one. Choosing by type instead of status, apartments and penthouses are narrower entry points; buyers who are not UAE residents should read the foreign-buyer guide first.
