How to check construction progress on a Dubai villa or townhouse
Payments release from a unit account against construction progress signed off by a consultant, so the question worth answering is whether that stage matches the site. The escrow regime protects your money from being spent elsewhere; it does not test the stage.
What the escrow regime does
Off-plan units in Dubai are required to run unit accounts, with releases tied to construction progress and a portion retained until after handover. It is a genuine protection and it is the reason the market recovered its credibility.
What it governs is where the money goes. Whether the stage that released it had actually been reached is a different question, answered by a consultant engaged by the developer, and nothing in the regime asks anybody else to look.
What to track
- The construction percentage reported for the unit, and the date of each report.
- Every revision of the completion date, kept in writing.
- What is physically built against the stage descriptions in your sale agreement.
- Whether activity on site matches the reported rate. A unit reporting steady progress with a thinning site is worth a closer look.
The window that closes
On villas and townhouses the sequence is the same as anywhere: structure, services, then the walls close. Everything you might want established about how the building was made has to be established before that.
By handover the question has narrowed to the finish, which is what a snagging visit answers. Useful, and a different question.
What to do with what you find
- 01Establish the state on a stated date, with photographs and a record of what was not visible.
- 02Compare it against the stage description in your agreement, in writing.
- 03Raise any discrepancy in the form and within the time your agreement requires.
- 04Keep the record whatever the answer: a series of dated records is what makes a later position possible.
Questions on this
Can I visit the site myself?
Access on an active site is at the developer's discretion and is often restricted for genuine safety reasons. What matters is establishing before signing that somebody acting for you can attend at all.
The unit account exists. Is my money safe?
Safer than without one, and not the same as safe. The account governs where funds go, not whether the building rises or when.
Does a reported percentage mean anything?
It means somebody signed off on it. Whether it matches the site is exactly what nobody acting for the buyer is currently checking.
Read one before you buy one
The specimen shows the whole structure: status, what each payment was meant to buy, the forecast with its range, the photographic record and the limits of what was checked.