Every owner in a jointly owned Dubai building, apartment, villa, or office, pays an annual service charge for the upkeep of shared areas. What is different in Dubai is that this money does not simply sit in a management company's general account. It runs through Mollak, a Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA) platform built on Law No. (6) of 2019 Concerning Ownership of Jointly Owned Real Property in the Emirate of Dubai (Dubai Legislation). That law sets three things in place at once: a RERA-approved budget before a single dirham is billed, a ring-fenced escrow account once money is collected, and an owners committee with a formal, if limited, say in how it is spent. This guide covers the mechanism itself, not typical charge rates, and how an owner actually uses it.
What Mollak Is, and What It Is Not
Mollak (Arabic for "owners") is described by RERA and the Dubai Land Department (DLD) as an integrated e-system that monitors service charge accounts for jointly owned property, built around the escrow account mechanism required by law (Mollak, Dubai Land Department). It is not the management company. The management company still does the cleaning contracts, the maintenance calls, and the day-to-day running of the building. Mollak is the oversight layer sitting above that: it is where the annual budget gets logged for RERA approval, where the bank account holding owners' money is registered, and where an owner can look up the RERA-approved rate for their community and flag a problem.
Before 2019, this oversight ran through an older structure built around "Owners Associations" under a 2007 law. That law was repealed, and the rights and obligations of Owners Associations were formally transferred to what the current law calls "Management Entities" (Dubai Legislation). If an older document you hold still refers to an Owners Association, that reference now points to the developer, management company, or hotel project management company running the building today.
How a Service Charge Budget Actually Gets Approved
A management company cannot decide on a number and start billing. Under Article 27 of the law, it "must not charge Owners, or collect from them, any amounts whatsoever... without first obtaining the relevant approval of RERA," and RERA itself "may not approve or ratify the Service Charges... budget unless it is approved by a certified audit firm recognised by RERA for this purpose" (Dubai Legislation). In practice, this means every annual budget passes through an independent, RERA-recognised auditor before RERA signs off, which is why Mollak's homepage publishes a directory of approved auditor companies alongside its directory of approved management companies (Mollak).
The owners committee sits in this process too, though its role is advisory rather than a veto. Its duties under Article 24 include reviewing the annual budget and providing recommendations, and requesting the underlying financial reports to do so (Dubai Legislation). Where a full budget is not ready in time, RERA can approve a temporary budget under separately issued rules until the audited version clears (Dubai Legislation). Once approved, an owner's individual bill is not negotiable: it is fixed by the ratio of that unit's area to the total area of the jointly owned property, calculated using the method set by the DLD Director General (Dubai Legislation).
The Escrow Mechanism: Where the Money Actually Sits
Once a budget clears, the money owners pay does not go into the management company's working capital. Article 30 requires every management entity to open a dedicated Service Charges account with a RERA-recognised bank, deposit anything it collects within seven working days, and keep it there under a hard protection: funds in that account "may not, for any reason whatsoever, be subject to attachment in favour of the Management Entity creditors" (Dubai Legislation). If the management company runs into financial trouble or is replaced, its creditors cannot reach into the building's service charge pool.
The law also lists exactly what that escrowed money is allowed to fund: cleaning and security of common parts; operation, maintenance and repair of common areas; the property's insurance premiums; audit fees on the account itself; the management company's own fee; the developer's administrative expenses on major projects; a separate cash reserve for emergencies (a sinking fund, held apart from the operating account and only touchable in genuine emergencies or with RERA's approval); RERA's own inspection costs; and any other cost the master community declaration prescribes and RERA approves (Dubai Legislation). That list is, in effect, what a service charge invoice breaks down into, and what Mollak's "Understand Your Invoice" feature is built to walk an owner through, component by component (Mollak).
The Owners Committee: A Formal Seat, With Real Limits
Every jointly owned property large enough to qualify (once at least 10% of its units are registered to named owners) gets an owners committee of up to nine members, appointed by RERA from owners who actually live in the property, are of good standing, and are current on their own service charges (Dubai Legislation). It meets at least quarterly, and each member gets one vote regardless of how many units they own (Dubai Legislation). Its powers are real but bounded: it reviews and recommends on the budget, forwards owner complaints to the management company and escalates to RERA if they go unanswered within 14 days, flags urgent structural defects, and, for the largest category of ordinary (non-major, non-hotel) properties, can formally ask RERA to replace an underperforming management company (Dubai Legislation). It cannot approve its own budget or overrule RERA. It is a formal channel into the system, not an independent authority over it.
DLD periodically opens registration windows for committee seats through its own website and the Dubai REST app; a January 2025 cycle required resident-owner status, a valid UAE ID, a certificate of good conduct from Dubai Police, and no outstanding service charges, with seats going to the first qualifying applicants and final approval resting with RERA (Dubai Land Department). A building with no functioning committee usually just has not had a registration round run for it yet, not an exemption from the law.
Verifying Your Charge Through Mollak
An owner's practical starting point is Mollak's Service Charge Index, which lets you look up the RERA-approved rate your specific community is entitled to charge, so you can compare it against what your invoice actually shows (Mollak). The same portal maintains directories of RERA-approved management companies and approved auditor firms, so you can confirm the entity billing you is actually the one RERA has on record for your building, and that its budget went through a recognised auditor rather than an in-house estimate (Mollak). This matters in practice: DLD's own Rental Disputes Center has stated that the RERA-approved invoice is the reference point used to settle disputes over amounts, which means a mismatch between what you are billed and what Mollak's index shows is the single strongest piece of evidence you can bring to a complaint (Dubai Land Department).
Disputing a Charge: The Escalation Ladder
The law builds in a specific order, and skipping steps generally slows a complaint down rather than speeding it up. First, raise the issue with the management company directly, since the owners committee's own duty is to relay owner complaints to it and only escalate if the management company fails to respond within 14 days (Dubai Legislation). Second, if you have no functioning committee or the management company does not respond, RERA itself has an explicit audit and inspection role that includes considering complaints against developers, management entities, and owners committees, and taking action on them (Dubai Legislation). Third, if the disagreement is a genuine legal dispute rather than an administrative fix, the law gives the Rental Disputes Center exclusive jurisdiction over all disputes arising under it (Dubai Legislation), a jurisdiction the Center's own chairman has confirmed publicly covers exactly this kind of common-area charge dispute (Dubai Land Department).
One honest caveat: disputing a charge is not the same as withholding payment while you dispute it. The law is explicit that an owner "may not refrain from paying the Service Charges... approved by RERA," and a management entity holding a genuinely unpaid balance can serve a 30-day notice, then pursue enforcement through the Rental Disputes Center's execution judge, up to and including a public auction of the unit to recover the debt (Dubai Legislation). If you believe a charge is wrong, the safer path is usually to raise the dispute formally while continuing to pay, rather than to stop paying and argue afterward.
The Management Company's Accountability, Not Just Its Role
RERA's oversight does not end at budget approval. Every management entity must file a report to RERA every six months on the maintenance work it has actually performed (Dubai Legislation), and must hold a bank guarantee in DLD's favour that can be drawn on to fix damage caused by its own negligence (Dubai Legislation). Where RERA finds a company incompetent, it can replace it through a defined process: a written warning, 14 days for the company to respond, an independent audit of its compliance with the approved budget, and a 30-day handover (Dubai Legislation). Breaches of the law carry fines starting at AED 1,000,000, doubling on repetition within a year up to a cap of AED 2,000,000 (Dubai Legislation). Most of the law's substantive duties fall on management entities and developers, but Article 44's fine applies to "a person who commits any act constituting a violation of the provisions of this Law," and is not textually restricted to corporate operators (Dubai Legislation).
What This Actually Means for Owners and Buyers
Mollak does not cap how much your service charge can be, and it will not make a genuinely expensive-to-run building cheap. What it does is close off the two failure modes that gave Dubai's older, pre-2019 service charge regime a bad reputation: budgets set without independent review, and collected funds never actually ring-fenced from a struggling operator's other liabilities. For a buyer comparing units in different communities, the RERA-approved rate on Mollak's index is a genuine, checkable number, not a broker's estimate, and it is worth pulling before you commit. For an existing owner, the system's value shows up less in day-to-day billing and more when something goes wrong: an unresponsive management company, an opaque line item, or a budget that jumped without explanation. Used through its actual escalation order rather than around it, Mollak turns those situations into a documented process with a regulator and a court at the end, rather than a dispute with no formal address at all.
FAQ
What is Mollak, in one sentence? Mollak is RERA and the Dubai Land Department's e-system for monitoring service charge accounts in Dubai's jointly owned properties, built around a mandatory escrow mechanism and RERA-approved budgets under Law No. (6) of 2019 (Mollak, Dubai Land Department).
Can a management company set any service charge rate it wants? No. It cannot bill owners at all without RERA's approval, and RERA cannot approve a budget unless it has already been reviewed by a certified auditor recognised by RERA for that purpose (Dubai Legislation).
Where does my service charge payment actually go? Into a dedicated escrow-style Service Charges account at a RERA-recognised bank, which the management company must fund within seven working days of collection and which is legally protected from its own creditors (Dubai Legislation). The law lists exactly what that account can fund, from cleaning and security to the sinking fund and audit fees (Dubai Legislation).
What is the Owners Committee, and can I join it? It is a body of up to nine resident owners appointed by RERA to review the annual budget, relay complaints, and flag issues to RERA, formed once at least 10% of a property's units are registered to owners (Dubai Legislation). DLD periodically opens registration through its website and the Dubai REST app to resident owners who are current on their own service charges and hold a police-issued certificate of good conduct (Dubai Land Department).
How do I check whether my invoice matches the approved rate? Use Mollak's Service Charge Index to look up the RERA-approved rate for your community, and its "Understand Your Invoice" tool to see how each line item is calculated (Mollak). DLD's own Rental Disputes Center has said the RERA-approved invoice is the reference point used when a charge is disputed (Dubai Land Department).
If I dispute a charge, do I still have to keep paying it? Yes, for now. The law does not allow an owner to withhold payment of a RERA-approved charge while a dispute is pending, and unpaid charges can lead to a lien on the unit and, ultimately, enforcement through the Rental Disputes Center up to a public auction (Dubai Legislation). Raise the dispute formally through the committee, RERA, or the Rental Disputes Center while continuing to pay.
Sources
- Dubai Government Legal Affairs Department. Law No. (6) of 2019 Concerning Ownership of Jointly Owned Real Property in the Emirate of Dubai. https://dlp.dubai.gov.ae/Legislation%20Reference/2019/Law%20No.%20%286%29%20of%202019%20Concerning%20Ownership%20of%20Jointly%20Owned%20Real%20Property%20in%20the%20Emirate%20of%20Dubai.pdf
- Mollak, Dubai Land Department / RERA. Official portal. https://mollak.dubailand.gov.ae/publicpages/home.html
- Dubai Land Department. Dubai Land Department Encourages Property Owners to Join Owners Committees for Enhanced Governance and Sustainable Practices. https://dubailand.gov.ae/en/news-media/dubai-land-department-encourages-property-owners-to-join-owners-committees-for-enhanced-governance-and-sustainable-practices/
- Dubai Land Department. Real Estate Property Owner is Obliged to Pay Service and Usage Charges for Jointly Owned Property. https://dubailand.gov.ae/en/news-media/real-estate-property-owner-is-obliged-to-pay-service-and-usage-charges-for-jointly-owned-property/
- Rental Disputes Center, Dubai Courts. https://rdc.gov.ae/en/
