Decision 25 of 2025, for operators

What it is

The decision was issued by the Chairman of the Department of Municipalities and Transport (DMT) under Law No. 3 of 2015 on the real estate sector, as amended by Law No. 2 of 2025. The Chairman signed it on 24 November 2025; it was published in the Abu Dhabi Official Gazette (issue 2 of 2026, 28 February 2026) and, under its Article 45, took effect that day. DMT announced it publicly on 27 March 2026 as one of four decisions. The regulator it puts in charge is "the Centre", which Article 1 defines as the Abu Dhabi Real Estate Centre, ADREC.

It travels with Administrative Decision No. 26 of 2025, a unified bylaw for owners' committees. Decision 25 sets the obligations; Decision 26 sets how the committee that watches over them is formed and run. The 2025 amendment to the law replaced the "Owners' Association" (rendered "Owners' Union" in older translations) with the "Owners' Committee" throughout, and repealed the law's old association articles (66–70, 75, 76 and 82).

It repeals whatever conflicts with it (Article 43) and sets no general transition period: only two articles look back, preserving what a developer paid on an owner's behalf before the decision (Article 31) and the cost split under sale contracts signed before it took effect (Article 38). Everything else applied from day one, and ADREC has been applying it through its 2026 circulars.

Who it covers

Four parties, all named in the text: the developer (main or sub-developer), the management company accredited by ADREC, the owners and occupants, and the owners' committee. It applies to any building, part of a building or land divided into units with common parts, from a single tower (common parts, service fees) to a master community (common facilities, compound fees charged by the main developer, Article 33).

This guide covers communities regulated by ADREC. Al Reem Island and Al Maryah Island are in the jurisdiction of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), whose own Real Property Regulations have applied to property there since 1 January 2025 and which licenses property and association managers itself. Decision 25 is written for the Emirate and does not mention ADGM, and neither regulator has published a statement on how existing communities on the islands are governed during the change. If your community is there, confirm the position with ADGM's Registration Authority and ADREC before relying on this guide.

If you are the developer

• Appoint a management company accredited by ADREC within 30 days of handing over the first unit (Article 20).
• Keep the appointment to three consecutive years unless ADREC approves longer (an agreement that runs past that without approval counts as three years), with a clause letting you terminate without going to court if a breach is not fixed within 30 days of written notice. Send ADREC a copy of the agreement, any renewal or amendment and the agreed fee for approval; it can refuse, with reasons. Do not renew with a company that caused damage through negligence or poor service, ignored an ADREC works notice, or left a breach unremedied (Article 21).
• Pay the service fees on unsold units, and on sold units where your sale contract says you will (Article 29). If you collected management or maintenance money from buyers before the completion certificate, you may not have taken it more than three months before it was due to be spent, and within 30 days of appointing the management company you must have a certified auditor account for it and deposit the balance in the service-fee account (Article 38).
• Deposit the floor or compound plans with ADREC within 60 days of the completion certificate (Article 40; extendable once by 30 days for acceptable reasons).
• Before a buyer signs, give a signed disclosure statement: the building and its facilities, the floor, compound or building management regulation, a budget for the general and reserve accounts for the first two financial years and the estimated service fees for the unit, and estimated start and handover dates (Article 42, for off-plan sales; Article 41 extends the duty to completed projects and resales). You are liable for anything materially inaccurate or incomplete for two years after transfer, to a later buyer as well (Article 42).

If you are the management company

• You must be accredited by ADREC to manage, operate, maintain and repair the common parts (Article 20).
• Keep your administrative, accounting and legal records in an electronic system, and give ADREC data in the form and timeframe it sets (Article 24).
• Send ADREC a report every six months on the management of the property and the maintenance works done (Article 23). ADREC's May 2026 circular adds periodic reporting on collections: amounts collected, deposited and spent, what is outstanding, and what you did about it.
• Run two bank accounts: one for service fees, a separate one for the reserve. Reserve money moves only with ADREC's approval, except in an emergency. Any cash received outside the account goes in within five working days (Article 32). Until you are appointed, the developer holds the fees in that kind of account (Article 32).
• Prepare an annual budget with a contribution to the reserve. It may not include financing costs, major installation costs or fees under agreements the decision forbids. The owners' committee gets a complete copy and may send recommendations to ADREC; every owner gets an electronic copy (Articles 34 and 35).
• ADREC may approve the budget, reject it or ask for changes, with written reasons, including changes the owners' committee has recommended and ADREC accepts. You have 14 days to deal with them; miss that and ADREC may reject the budget and ask for a new one (Article 35).
• Any supply agreement whose cost feeds into the service fees needs ADREC's prior approval and may not produce a private profit for you or the developer (Article 26). It runs for at most two years without ADREC's approval, and never more than twenty in total (Article 27). It must be in writing with a licensed supplier, at market pricing, with performance monitoring, a right to terminate without court if a breach is not cured in 10 days, and a ban on secret commissions (Article 28).
• Insure the common parts for reconstruction and carry liability cover; the premiums sit inside the service fees (Article 37).
• If maintenance falls short, ADREC can inspect, serve a notice naming the works and a deadline, and if you and the developer do not comply, send in one of its approved companies to do the works at the developer's cost (Article 25). On termination, hand over all books and records without delay (Article 23).

Service charges: approval first, then collection

A service charge is lawful only after ADREC approves it, and ADREC approves it only after DMT has. Anything charged without that approval is unlawful, has no legal effect, and the payer can recover it; no other fee of any name may be charged (Article 29). DMT had already been insisting on prior approval (it reaffirmed the rule publicly in September 2021); the decision gives it teeth.

Each owner's share follows the unit's area as a proportion of the whole, under the mechanism ADREC adopts (Article 29). Fees are paid monthly or quarterly; an owner cannot be made to pay a whole year at once (Article 30).

Collecting arrears is a procedure, not a phone call. ADREC's May 2026 circular tells management companies to notify every owner in arrears and gives owners 60 days from that notice to settle. The decision's own procedure is: an ADREC-accredited auditor verifies the amount; the owner is served a notarised notice giving 30 days to pay; if they do not, you apply to ADREC on its form, and unless the owner has an excuse ADREC accepts, ADREC issues a document that has the force of an enforceable instrument and may block any disposal of the unit on the register until the debt is paid (Article 30). Neither text says how the circular's 60 days and the decision's 30 days combine; the cautious reading is that the ordinary notice comes first and the notarised notice follows. The company's lien over the unit survives a change of owner, and the new owner takes on the fees from the date of transfer (Article 30).

ADREC's April 2026 circular moves invoicing, from the 2027 budgets onward, to up to four approvals a year, two to four itemised invoices (community charge and master-community fee shown separately) and a surplus-or-deficit invoice after the audit, with quarterly financial statements to owners; its annual-cycle guide plans the budget on roughly a 16-month lead.

The owners' committee

Under Decision 26's bylaw, a committee is formed once 30 per cent of the units are registered to multiple owners (Article 2). It has five to nine members, all owners living in the property, with legal capacity, good conduct, a valid residence visa, no arrears on service or community charges, and ADREC's approval (Article 3). The developer cannot sit on it, even for unsold units (Article 3). The management company must run an electronic platform for nominations and voting; nominations stay open at least 30 days and close 10 days before the vote; each owner has one vote however many units they hold, and an owner in arrears cannot vote (Articles 4 and 5). ADREC approves the elected members, and may reject any without giving reasons (Article 7). Terms run two years from ADREC's approval of the committee, extendable by up to a year (Article 9); ADREC's annual cycle aligns new terms to 15 December.

The committee advises the developer on choosing the management company, reviews the annual budget and may send recommendations to ADREC without preparing, approving or auditing it, monitors the management company and takes owners' complaints to it, and may escalate a complaint to ADREC if it is not dealt with in 60 days (bylaw Article 10). It can ask DMT to oblige the developer to replace a management company whose negligence or poor service has harmed the property (Article 10). It may not do anything the law does not assign to it; ADREC's own wording is that committees "do not interfere in day-to-day operations". ADREC can dissolve a committee or remove members at any time without giving reasons, and a new one must be elected within 60 days (Article 15). ADREC's guides add that the committee co-owns the Community Management Plan with the manager and meets at least quarterly.

One exception sits in Decision 25 itself: the Chairman may designate projects where the developer manages through an accredited company, and there the committee has only the powers the Chairman assigns (Article 20, implementing Article 65(4) of the amended law).

What "accredited" means in practice

The text says "accredited by the Centre", and that the Centre, with DMT's approval, authorises specialised companies to provide "administrative supervision services" (Article 20). ADREC may require such a company to lodge a bank guarantee or professional insurance in ADREC's favour to cover damage caused by its negligence (Article 20). ADREC's Community Affairs page describes the authorisation as a licence valid for two years, applied for through its system, and counts 15 community management companies without naming them. We found no public list and no published criteria; ADREC can confirm a company's status.

Dates to put in the calendar

• 30 days: appoint the manager after first handover; have an auditor account for any pre-completion collections; cure a breach; pay after a notarised arrears notice; nominations for a committee stay open at least this long.
• 60 days: deposit plans after the completion certificate; owners settle after a circular notice; a committee escalates an unanswered complaint to ADREC; a dissolved committee is re-elected.
• 14 days: answer ADREC's budget changes. 10 days: a supplier's cure period. Five working days: bank cash received outside the account.
• Every six months: report to ADREC. Mid-year: audit review.
• Two years: supply agreements without ADREC approval; disclosure liability; committee terms, from ADREC's approval (extendable by one); an administrative-supervision licence. Three years: the management appointment. Twenty years: the outer limit on any supply agreement.

Where the records live

Almost every obligation above is a record: an electronic accounting system, six-monthly reports, budgets sent to every owner, notices that count as received when they arrive at the owner's registered email, with the sender keeping proof of delivery (Article 39), a management plan handed from one committee to the next. The decision does not name software; it asks that the record exists and can be produced. Locality is a resident-services app for communities in the UAE, used today for resident requests, facility bookings, announcements and documents, in English, Arabic and French; the finance and compliance records above stay in whatever system you run for them.