How to Start a Buying and Selling of Real Estate Business in Dubai with Meydan Free Zone

Dubai's property market recorded 226,000 transactions worth AED 761 billion in 2024, the highest in the emirate's history. Buying, holding and selling property as a principal is a licensed activity in its own right, and activity code 6810.99 is the license for it.

This guide covers what the license allows, who it suits, the approvals you need, and what compliance looks like. Two items shape everything: RERA pre-approval, and anti-money-laundering duties that apply from your first transaction.

Key Stats at a Glance

What This License Covers

Code 6810.99 covers buying, selling, renting and operating real estate you own or lease yourself.

That takes in a wide range: residential apartments, villas, townhouses and plots; commercial offices, retail units, warehouses and exhibition halls; land in unimproved form; self-storage facilities; shopping centres and malls; and furnished or unfurnished apartments let for permanent residential use on monthly or annual terms. It also includes developing building projects you intend to keep and rent out, and subdividing real estate into lots without improving the land.

Four things sit outside it. Developing building projects for sale falls under separate development categories. Subdividing and improving land is excluded. Hotels, campgrounds, worker hostels and short-term accommodation are excluded. And real estate consultancy or management for third parties falls under activity group 682. The distinction throughout is that you are acting as principal on your own assets, not as an agent for somebody else.

Who This Suits

Two investor profiles, and the difference matters more than it first appears. Residential investors and traders buy and sell apartments, villas and townhouses across Dubai's freehold zones, building portfolios on rental yields, capital appreciation and Golden Visa eligibility. This is the higher-turnover end, and it is where AML scrutiny concentrates.

Commercial and mixed-use investors acquire, hold and sell offices, retail units, exhibition halls, warehouses and mixed-use developments. Holding periods run longer, occupier demand drives returns, and the tax position does the rest.

Both benefit from the same framework: zero income tax, zero capital gains tax, and full foreign freehold ownership in designated zones. That combination is what makes Dubai unusual among major property markets, and it is why the investor base has widened so quickly.

Structuring the License

The structuring question here is narrower than in most activities, because RERA pre-approval applies whatever structure you choose.

What does vary is what else your company can do. This license cannot be combined with other activities except those inside RERA Activity Group 2, so an investor planning to run property trading alongside an unrelated business will need a separate entity for the other side.

Plan that at the start. Discovering the restriction after you have set up one company for everything means unpicking a structure rather than adjusting a plan.

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Step by Step Setup Guide

• Step 1, confirm your activity scope: Check that what you intend to do sits inside 6810.99 rather than in development-for-sale or third-party agency work, because those are different licenses.
• ‍Step 2, start the RERA pre-approval: This comes before the license is issued. Treat it as the item everything else waits on. ‍
• Step 3, check your activity combination: Confirm whether anything else you want on the license falls inside RERA Activity Group 2. If not, plan a second entity. ‍
• Step 4, book your trade name and submit your setup documents: Through the Meydan Free Zone portal, with passport copies for every shareholder and director. ‍
• Step 5, build your AML programme before you trade: Customer due diligence, beneficial ownership identification, source of funds verification and record-keeping all need to be working from your first transaction, not drafted afterwards. ‍
• Step 6, appoint responsibility for compliance: Somebody has to own the AML programme, monitor relationships and file suspicious transaction reports when required. ‍
• Step 7, collect your license and open a bank account: Banks apply extra scrutiny to real estate entities, so bring your RERA approval and a documented AML framework.

Compliance and What You Need in Place

RERA pre-approval

The Real Estate Regulatory Agency must clear you before Meydan Free Zone issues a business license. There is no route into this activity that skips it, and no version of the timeline that ignores it.

Anti-money laundering

This is the heaviest compliance item and it is not optional. Real estate buying and selling is a designated non-financial business or profession under the UAE AML framework, which means you must run a compliant AML and counter-terrorist-financing programme. That covers customer due diligence, beneficial ownership identification, source of funds verification, ongoing monitoring of business relationships, record-keeping, and filing suspicious transaction reports where required, all under UAE Federal Law No. 20 of 2019 and its implementing regulations.

Source of funds

In practice this is where most of the work sits. High-value property transactions attract scrutiny, and being able to evidence where a buyer's money came from is a condition of doing business rather than a formality. Build the process before you need it.

The activity combination limit

Your license cannot carry activities outside RERA Activity Group 2. Adding an unrelated business line later is a structural question, not an amendment.

Staying inside scope

Developing for sale, improving land and acting as an agent for third parties all sit outside this code. If your plan drifts toward any of them, get the licensing checked before you commit capital.

Market Opportunity

The 2024 numbers are the strongest in Dubai's history. 226,000 transactions worth AED 761 billion, representing 36% growth in volume and a 20% rise in value year on year.

The investor base is widening as fast as the market. Dubai attracted 110,000 new investors to real estate in 2024, a 55% increase, and residential capital values rose 19.8% year on year by December 2024.

Policy points the same way. The Dubai Real Estate Strategy 2033 targets doubling the sector's contribution to GDP, while the 10-year Golden Visa for purchases of AED 2 million or above, zero income tax, zero capital gains tax and full foreign freehold rights in designated zones together create a framework few markets can match. That is the depth of confidence the transaction figures reflect.

Conclusion

Buying and selling real estate under code 6810.99 gives you a licensed position in the world's most commercially active property market, backed by a tax framework and ownership rights built to attract exactly this kind of investor.

The two gating items are RERA pre-approval and AML. Neither can be worked around, and the AML programme in particular needs to be running before your first transaction rather than assembled after it.

Get the scope right at the outset too, because development-for-sale and third-party agency work sit outside this code entirely. Speak to the Meydan Free Zone team to confirm your activity scope and work through the RERA approval sequence.

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References

• Dubai Land Department
• Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism
• Federal Tax Authority