Dubai cold calling rules for brokers: the Green List explained

What is the Green List, and why does it matter more than a do not call list?

Most compliance questions about cold calling assume the rule works like a do not call registry: a list of people who have opted out, checked before dialling. Dubai's actual system for property owners works the other way round. The Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide, RERA's manual for how a Dubai broker is meant to operate, describes the Green List as a service inside the Dubai REST app that "enables brokers to find out the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of registered real estate owners." The list is not a suppression list of people to avoid. It is the actual directory a broker is supposed to use, built from owners who have registered, and it doubles as the boundary of who a broker is allowed to approach at all.

That inversion is the point most brokers get wrong. Calling a name and number sourced from an old listing, a title deed lookup, a personal contact or a database bought from somewhere else is not a grey area made safer by a polite approach. If that owner is not on the Green List, the guide's language is direct: brokers "are not allowed to contact owners not registered as part of the green list."

What happens if a broker contacts an owner who is not on the Green List?

The guide names the consequence without hedging. "If a broker should contact anyone not on the green list, a violation will be issued and their operations will be suspended in the event of a complaint or a report against them by an investor or a client." Two things about that sentence are worth reading carefully. The sanction is a suspension of operations, not a fine schedule with a stated amount, which puts it in a different category from the advertising fines discussed below. And the mechanism is reactive: the violation is triggered by a complaint or a report, not by RERA independently monitoring every call a broker makes.

That reactive design does not make the rule toothless. It shifts the practical risk from "will this call ever be checked" to "does this particular owner have a reason to complain", and an owner who is annoyed at an unsolicited pitch on a property they never registered as available has an obvious, direct route to complain since the Green List makes clear whose number they should not have had. A broker who wants a defensible position keeps the habit simple: work the Green List and Contract A, the RERA marketing agreement between a seller and the brokerage, rather than a purchased list or a personal contact, and the exposure covered in this section does not arise in the first place.

Does the Green List cover buyers and tenants too, or only owners?

Only owners, on the wording RERA has published. The Brokerage Practice Guide frames the Green List specifically around property owners and the brokers who want to market their units, which leaves outbound contact with buyers and tenants, the prospects on the other side of a transaction, outside this particular mechanism entirely. A broker calling a lead who enquired through a portal, or following up with a past client about a new listing, is not running into the Green List rule either way, because that rule was never written to cover that kind of contact.

That gap is genuinely a gap, not a hidden extension of the same rule. Nothing in the published guide states that contacting a buyer or tenant prospect requires a similar registration step, and nothing states the opposite either. What does apply generally, across the UAE rather than specific to brokers, is the telecommunications regulator's own complaint route, covered next, and it is considerably less specific than the Green List.

Is there a UAE wide do not call registry for cold calling prospects?

Not one that TDRA, the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority, publishes as a named, searchable list. What TDRA does operate is a complaint service, listed on its own site as "SMS Spam", through which a subscriber can report an unwanted marketing message, with a stated processing time of three to six working days and access through TDRA's smart app, its website or its contact centre on 800 12. That is a complaint mechanism rather than a consent registry, and it does not give a broker a list to check before dialling or texting a prospect, the way the Green List effectively does for owners.

This is worth stating honestly rather than filling with a guess. A general UAE marketing consent regime for one to one phone outreach to prospects, comparable in specificity to the Green List rule for owners, is not something this research could locate in what TDRA, the Dubai Land Department or ADREC publish. Brokers targeting prospects should treat the absence of a detailed published rule as a reason for caution rather than permission, particularly for SMS and bulk messaging, which is the channel TDRA's own complaint service is built around and the one most likely to draw a report.

Does a Trakheesi advertising permit cover a phone call, or only a published ad?

Only a published or broadcast ad. Dubai's Real Estate Ad Permit service lists 14 categories a Trakheesi permit can cover: newspaper ads, SMS ads, outdoor ads, vehicle ads, print ads, electronic ads, billboards, promotional campaigns, open days, classified ads, exhibitions, project launch ceremonies, promotion platforms and seminars. Every one of those is a published or broadcast piece of marketing that other people encounter passively. A single outbound phone call to one owner or one prospect is not a category on that list, and nothing in the Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide extends the permit requirement to cover it.

That has a practical consequence agents miss. A broker with a perfectly valid Trakheesi permit on their published listings is not thereby covered for their outbound calling activity, because the permit was never regulating that activity in the first place. The Green List, for owners specifically, is the mechanism actually doing that job in Dubai, and it sits entirely separately from the advertising permit system covered in our guide to the Trakheesi permit.

What should a broker actually do before making the first call?

Build the habit around what is actually published rather than around a general sense of caution. For an owner, confirm the property and the owner are on the Green List through Dubai REST before making contact, and use Contract A, the marketing agreement covered in our guide to RERA's forms A, B and F, to formalise the relationship once contact is established. The ethics section of the Brokerage Practice Guide lists maintaining privacy and preserving all documents among the standards a broker is expected to meet either way. For a prospect, there is no equivalent named list to check, so the safer posture is to keep outbound volume proportionate, honour any request to stop, and treat SMS blasts with particular caution given TDRA's own complaint route is built specifically around unwanted messages. Where a broker's own listings are underperforming for reasons unrelated to outreach, our guide to why a Property Finder listing gets no leads works through the other five causes.

Who you are contacting	What actually governs it	What goes wrong if you get it wrong
A property owner on the Green List	RERA's Green List system, via Dubai REST	Nothing, this is the intended route
A property owner not on the Green List	Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide, the Green List rule	A violation is issued, operations suspended on a complaint or report
A buyer or tenant prospect	No published broker specific rule; TDRA's general complaint route	Handled as a spam complaint, three to six working days, no confirmed penalty schedule
A published or broadcast advertisement	Trakheesi advertising permit, 14 categories	Fines from AED 50,000, progressive, up to licence cancellation for repeat breaches

Frequently asked questions

Can I call any property owner in Dubai to pitch for a listing?

Only if that owner is registered on RERA's Green List, accessed through the Dubai REST app. Contacting an owner who is not on it is described in the Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide as a violation, and the broker's operations can be suspended if the owner or another party complains or reports it.

How does a broker get onto the Green List, or get an owner onto it?

The Brokerage Practice Guide points brokers to a registration link inside the guide itself rather than describing a separate manual process, and frames registration as something done through the Dubai REST app alongside the broker's other RERA facing services. Confirm the current registration route inside the app rather than assuming an older process still applies.

Does a Trakheesi permit protect me if I also cold call the same owner or buyer?

No. A Trakheesi permit covers the 14 published or broadcast advertising categories DLD lists, none of which is a one to one phone call. The Green List, not the advertising permit, is the mechanism governing outbound contact with an owner, and there is no equivalent published mechanism specific to calling a buyer or tenant prospect.

Is there a fine amount published for a Green List violation?

Not a fixed figure. The published consequence is a violation followed by suspension of the broker's operations if a complaint or report is made, which is a different kind of sanction from the AED 50,000 progressive fine structure DLD has confirmed for advertising violations such as expired or manipulated permits.

What should I do if a prospect asks me to stop calling or texting?

Stop, and keep a record that the request was made and honoured. Nothing published gives a broker a general right to continue contact after an explicit request to stop, and TDRA's own complaint service exists specifically for unwanted marketing messages, which is the route a frustrated prospect is most likely to use next.

Sources

• Dubai Land Department and RERA, Real Estate Brokerage Practice Guide, second edition, November 2024, on the Green List and the Real Estate Permits section
• Dubai Land Department, Real Estate Ad Permit service card, the 14 advertisement categories a Trakheesi permit covers
• Dubai Land Department, DLD fines 10 real estate companies and warns another 30 for not adhering to advertising requirements
• Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority, SMS Spam complaint service, processing time and contact channels

Last verified: 2026-09-06