ADCB and Dubai Holding Real Estate signed a mortgage financing agreement on 15 September 2026 that changes the trigger point for off-plan lending. At Palm Jebel Ali, The Acres and Nad Al Sheba Gardens, the qualifying variable is payment progress, not construction progress: once a buyer has paid 50% of the unit price to the developer, ADCB will lend against the balance regardless of what stage the build has reached.
What actually changed
Standard off-plan lending in Dubai ties financing eligibility to a construction milestone, which is a proxy for completion risk. This agreement swaps that proxy for a payment threshold across three named communities under the Nakheel, Meraas and Dubai Properties brands. Everywhere else in the group's portfolio, the milestone-based model still applies, so the dataset here is a controlled subset, not a blanket policy change.
The numbers on the table
The terms disclosed: 3.49% fixed for the first 3 years, pre-approval validity of 18 months, and zero processing or valuation fees. The 3-year fixed rate is the figure to track against whatever ADCB's reversion rate turns out to be in year 4, since that is the number that will actually determine total cost of financing over a typical payment plan.
For anyone modeling Dubai off-plan cycles, this is a clean natural experiment: same developer, same bank, two lending regimes (payment-triggered vs milestone-triggered) running in parallel across a defined set of projects.
Originally published on Doment, Dubai property intelligence.
Top comments (0)