Dubai Land Department (DLD) is proud to possess strong cooperative relationships with several local partners, primarily banks in the UAE — including Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) — to support its directives and initiatives in its real estate registration and regulation processes, such as the Mollak system.

On 18 September 2019, DLD, represented, by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA), celebrated the opening at ADCB of more than 550 accounts for jointly owned property owners in Dubai, in accordance with the recently announced regulations in the Emirate. These accounts aim to regulate residential and commercial properties and ensure that service fees paid by landlords are spent on project maintenance.

During the event, HE Marwan bin Ghalita, CEO of RERA, and his team met with Colin Fraser, Head Whole Sale Banking Group at ADCB and his team, during which they discussed the unique relationship between the two parties over the past ten years and their cooperation in many initiatives that aim to support the real estate sector.

ADCB honoured the employees of the Real Estate Relations Regulatory Department at RERA, who in turn honoured ADCB’s employees in recognition of their joint success in opening more than 550 financial accounts of joint ownership properties for escrow account service fees. These joint efforts are expected to contribute to the development of the real estate sector for joint ownership by developing new real estate solutions that ensure the preservation of rights and transparency as well as facilitate procedures for external customers.

Bin Ghalita said: “The Mollak system continues to achieve tangible success in the jointly owned property sector, especially as this new global-first electronic system includes new innovations that ensure fairness and transparency. The system also helps co-owners deal with companies that manage this type of project to easily manage their properties. Thanks to our partnerships with leading banks in the Emirate, Mollak provides a new and integrated system to control accounts related to service fees in these projects, based on financial accounts operating under the escrow account mechanism.”

The Mollak system operates through a group of users involved in the management of jointly owned properties, real estate unit owners, and real estate units registered and approved by DLD, where users cannot change any of the data. At the time of launch, the system attracted seven banks as account trustees for jointly owned properties, most notably ADCB.

Fraser praised RERA’s efforts in regulating the real estate sector and ensuring its transparency, thanking RERA  for honouring ADCB and the team who work on opening accounts for jointly owned properties. He commented: “We greatly value the strong and positive working relationship that ADCB has built with RERA and DLD over the past decade. With the help of its highly professional support and guidance, we have created a leading capability for Owners Associations which has led to us opening over 550 accounts that will benefit the market in support of RERA’s goals to continually improve the regulatory environment for communities. We believe this is good for the UAE real estate market and are proud of our association in general.”

The system ensures comprehensive regulatory governance of all parties by imposing service fees before asking owners to pay via DLD’s and RERA’s database, based on the areas of DLD-registered units and their owners. The real estate complex management company licensed and registered by RERA begins the procedure by submitting the financial statements and downloading copies of maintenance and service contracts and other supplier contracts for common property services. The auditor then proceeds to audit these financial statements and contracts on bases and criteria approved by RERA, which then reviews the completeness of the transaction’s audit.