How to Check Any Dubai Developer's Track Record Before You Buy
The question every remote buyer asks
If you're buying off-plan from outside the UAE, "is this developer actually going to deliver" is the real question behind the price and the floor plan. Off-plan makes up over half of Dubai's recorded residential sales — 56% across the full Land Department record — and it's the segment with the most execution risk, so this is worth doing properly, not skipping because the sales deck looks polished.
Step 1: confirm they're registered, not just branded
A developer name on a billboard isn't the same as a company with an active RERA project registration. Before anything else, confirm the specific project — not just the company — has a valid Trakheesi advertising permit and is registered on DLD's Oqood system. See our full verification guide for exactly how to check this yourself, for free, in a few minutes.
Step 2: look at their real transaction history, not their brochure
Marketing materials show renders and promises. Real transaction data shows what actually happened. On Keyva, every developer with projects in our database has a track record panel built entirely from real Dubai Land Department transactions:
- Total real transactions across all their projects — a genuine scale/activity signal.
- Completed vs. off-plan/in-progress project count — completed means real resale transactions exist for that project, i.e. actual delivered, occupied units, not a claimed date.
- How many areas they're active in.
This won't tell you if a specific unit will be delivered on time — DLD's own data doesn't include handover dates for most projects, so we don't guess at delivery punctuality (a claim we can't back with real data isn't one we'll make). What it does tell you is whether a developer has a real, verifiable history of actually completing projects, versus being all off-plan announcements with nothing delivered yet.
Step 3: price-check the specific project
A developer can have a strong track record and still overprice a specific unit. Compare the project's asking AED/sqft against its area's real median — see Dubai property price comparisons by area — before you commit.
Putting it together
None of these three steps alone is decisive. A developer with a large, real completed portfolio, a properly registered project, and a price in line with the area's real comparables is about as verified as a remote buyer can get without flying in personally. Look up any developer's real numbers on their developer page.