Service Charges in Dubai: What Mollak Requires

A management company that has just won a Dubai building’s contract inherits a compliance system as much as a maintenance schedule. Since Law No. (6) of 2019 replaced the old Owners Association model with Management Entities, service charges in Dubai run through one channel only — Mollak, the Real Estate Regulatory Agency’s (RERA) own platform — and almost every operational rule that matters sits in RERA’s circulars, not in the law’s 52 articles alone.

Who actually picks the manager

The first thing worth knowing is who is not choosing the management company. In an ordinary building — Law 6/2019’s “Category 3”, which covers most Dubai apartment towers that are not a developer-run Category 1 major project or a Category 2 hotel project — RERA selects and contracts the management company itself. The owners committee can request that RERA replace an underperforming manager, following a defined escalation procedure, but it does not appoint one directly. A go-to-market that assumes “sell to the owners’ board” is modelling the wrong buyer for Dubai.

Two accounts, and nothing charged without RERA’s approval first

Every jointly owned property needs two accounts at a RERA-approved bank: a general-cash account and a separate reserve-cash account for emergency and replacement costs. All money the management company collects has to move out of its own accounts and into the property’s account, with a RERA-appointed auditor verifying the transfer. Before any of it can be billed to owners at all, the annual service-charge budget has to be reviewed and signed off by a RERA-recognised audit firm; RERA will not approve a budget that has not cleared that audit first.

Invoices only through Mollak — no exceptions

Once a budget is approved, invoicing is not a choice of channel. RERA’s own circular is explicit: service-charge and usage-charge invoices are issued through Mollak, and an invoice from outside the system is not accepted. Budgets also need market-rate tendering: RERA’s e-service for budget approval requires at least three quotes per service provider before a request goes in. Mollak is also the ledger the RDSC courts read: before a management company can file an arrears case, an auditor has to reconcile the Mollak statement of account against the owner’s balance, at a set fee per unit, and produce a signed report for the case file.

Arrears: a real lien, and a fast route to enforcement

Where Dubai’s law is unusually strong, and worth building a collections pitch on, is article 32. The management entity holds a statutory lien on every unit for unpaid service charges — the unit cannot legally be sold or transferred until they are cleared. After a RERA-approved written notice and 30 days without payment, the claim becomes directly enforceable before the execution judge at the Rental Disputes Settlement Centre, without a separate lawsuit first, and the judge can order the unit sold at public auction to collect what is owed.

What the law does not let a manager do

The same law that gives a management company real collection power also fences it in. A 2021 RERA circular bars a developer or management entity from denying an owner handover of the unit, the keys, facilities access cards, transaction registration or the title deed as a way to force payment — arrears go through the RDSC process, not through locking a resident out. And on the owners committee’s own powers: it reviews budgets and can flag defects and complaints, but every one of its listed powers is a verb like verify, review, recommend or notify. It approves nothing and appoints no one; that authority sits with RERA.

The newest obligation: building safety over 20 years

A 2026 law, No. (3) of 2026 on the Quality and Safety of Buildings, adds a duty that lands squarely on the management company rather than on individual owners. Once a building passes 20 years from its completion certificate, it needs a Quality and Safety Certificate — a structural, cladding, electrical, fire-safety and CCTV inspection process run through a dedicated digital platform. For any building governed by Law 6/2019, the law explicitly assigns that duty to the Management Entity, not to the owner directly, alongside the owner’s own responsibility to monitor how well the manager performs it.

What Mollak is not

Mollak names three ways owners actually pay a service-charge invoice, and the default one is a manual bank transfer to the property’s escrow account followed by the resident emailing a payment slip to the management company — an unreconciled, human-matched payment, by Mollak’s own description. Card and wallet payment run through Noqodi. And while Dubai does publish a priced, licence-gated integration route for software providers (the DLD API Gateway’s Mollak Integration API), Mollak itself remains the system of record for invoicing, budgets and the owner ledger — a management company’s own tools sit alongside it, not in place of it.

Sources: Law No. (6) of 2019 Concerning Ownership of Jointly Owned Real Property in the Emirate of Dubai and Law No. (3) of 2026 Concerning the Quality and Safety of Buildings, Dubai Legislation (dlp.dubai.gov.ae); RERA Circular No. (1) of 2020, RERA Circular No. (2021/03) and RERA Circular No. (3) 2021, RERA Circular No. (4) of 2021, all published by Dubai Land Department (dubailand.gov.ae); Mollak’s own process and payment pages, mollak.dubailand.gov.ae, accessed 2026-09-07. This covers Dubai; Abu Dhabi runs a different law and regulator, ADREC.