Dubai Land Department (DLD), through its regulatory arm Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA), launched a first-of-its-kind electronic system titled ‘Mollak’ that incorporates innovations to ensure that justice and transparency are maintained. DLD prioritises customer satisfaction and happiness, in line with national strategies, and developed this system to help co-owned property owners and ascertain smooth and easy operations with their property managers.

The system provides a new and integrated system to monitor accounts related to service charges in these projects by relying on the financial accounts operating according to the mechanism of the escrow account. The system operates across a range of stakeholders in managing co-owned properties. It also operates within the real estate unit owners’ database, and the database of real estate units registered and approved by DLD, where no user may change the data.

HE Marwan bin Ghalita, CEO of RERA, said: “The Real Estate Relations Regulatory Department at RERA developed the work mechanism of this new system by relying on the competencies of citizens working at RERAto help disperse real estate knowledge through sustainable and modern electronic means in service of the real estate sector. As a customer-centric approach to its services, RERA committed a  pilot phase with most management companies, financial auditors, and financial institutions for the programme before officially launching it in Q2 2019 to high acclaim.”

Through the system, 468 bank accounts were successfully opened for project service charges, 88 management companies and 1,212 real estate projects were registered and approved by RERA as well as 200,000 real estate units, comprising residential apartments, villas, offices, and commercial shops. As a further consolidation of RERA’s emphasis of security and customer trust, it attracted seven banks to act as account trustees for co-owned properties and registered eight financial auditors to explicitly audit the application fees that were submitted for accreditation.

Bin Ghalita added: “Through the system, RERA seeks to increase the role of governance, regulation, and supervision as well as the participation of private sector specialists to increase real estate transparency and maintain the balance between real estate developers, management companies, and homeowners. This is to increase customer satisfaction and happiness in the services provided by RERA as well as facilitate the procedures of real estate unit owners when dealing with management companies and managing service-fee accounts.”

Mohammed bin Hammad, Senior Director of the Real Estate Relations Regulatory Department at RERA, commented: “Thanks to the innovative new Mollak system, co-owned property projects will be managed with the utmost provision of high-quality services in line with the expectations of owners and residents. RERA’s registration of auditors and banks to monitor transactions in the system is evidence of its emphasis on security, regulation, and customer trust.”

To ensure transparency as an additional metric, RERA also issues electronic approvals for service charges to real estate unit owners who also receive unified bills for service charges across the system. RERAcompels management companies to explicitly submit bills through the system to provide protection for service-fee claims made by real estate owners. The system works within the database

of DLD, RERA, financial institutions, and certified financial auditors registered with RERA as well as co-owned property management companies licensed and registered with RERA, ensuring the happiness and peace of mind of all homeowners.

The system is integral as it enforces comprehensive regulatory governance on a co-owned property management company licensed and registered with RERA, requiring that it upload financial statements and copies of maintenance, service, and other supplier contracts for common real estate services. The financial auditor then verifies these financial statements and contracts according to the basis and criteria adopted by RERA, which then reviews the completion of the transaction audit.

Real estate unit owners are notified electronically of a unit’s service fees with the publication of a unit’s service-fee-approval data in the service and maintenance fees index on DLD’s website. The management company then requests owners to pay the services fees through the Mollak system, and sends the service-fee invoices in accordance with the amounts approved by RERA but without any financial additions, especially as the system only works on financial accounts approved by RERA. This system includes providing easy solutions to enable owners to pay service fees through approved channels that were agreed upon by banks and the electronic payment gateway, Noqoodi.