Why UAE portals pull a listing and how to keep yours live

Published image, title and description specs for Property Finder, Bayut and dubizzle, the permit checks that unpublish a listing, and how long you get to fix a flag.

10 min readLast verified: 2026-09-02العربية

Why UAE portals pull a listing and how to keep yours live

Most listings that vanish from a UAE portal go for a permit reason rather than a photography reason. Property Finder validates Dubai permits against the Land Department's own API and revalidates every listing nightly, and an invalid or expired permit unpublishes the listing until it is fixed. Bayut holds a new listing until Instant Check clears it. Photographs are the second cause, and the two portals publish different specifications, so one asset set does not satisfy both.

What actually gets a UAE listing pulled?

The permit leads, and the checking is now automated. Property Finder states that it is connected to the DLD validation system through an API and validates that the permit is still valid, that it carries your company licence number, and that the permit purpose matches the listing type. It revalidates every listing nightly. If the permit is invalid or expired, the listing "will automatically be unpublished from the portal until you update the permit number", and a listing published with an invalid permit is blocked from publishing at all. Bayut runs the same idea under a different name and puts it plainly: a new listing "will not be published until its compliance status is assessed via Instant Check".

Price is checked against the permit too, which surprises people. Property Finder's quality rules say the Dubai price "must be the one defined by the RERA permit" with a variance of no more than 10 percent, and its 2025 compliance update gives a worked example: a permit showing AED 2,000,000 against a listing at AED 2,200,000 gets flagged, with two days to correct it before the listing comes down.

Duplication is third and it is structural now. Madhmoun caps the approved brokers who may advertise one Abu Dhabi property at three, with the owner notified when a broker applies. Bayut reports the Dubai equivalent: since October 2022 a seller can generate a maximum of three Trakheesi permits per listing. Property Finder's own rule is tighter still at agency level, since "a single brokerage company is allowed to publish only one listing for any given unit", and listings breaking it "will be removed or deranked".

How long do you get to fix a flag?

Days, not weeks, and the clock differs by flag. Property Finder's Listing Action Tracker gives two business days for price realism, duplication, a wrong or expired permit, an unavailable listing, a claimed transaction and an invalid Dubai BRN, seven days for an invalid Abu Dhabi broker licence number, and ten days to resubmit a rejected listing verification. Disputes go to the quality control team, and Property Finder says the dispute option is disabled where it holds definitive data confirming the error.

Two 2025 changes are worth knowing if you sell off plan or work Abu Dhabi. From 4 August 2025 every off plan listing needs a unit level permit, with project level permits restricted to developers, and existing listings had seven business days to update before automatic removal with no credit refund. From 13 August 2025 an Abu Dhabi listing sitting under a permit with sub permits must use one of those sub permits, with four flag reasons including sub permits exhausted, and a seven business day grace period on each.

The commercial sanction sits above all of that. Property Finder's rules say a repeat offender loses the SuperAgent status and tag, has all listings deranked, and may lose access to PF Expert. The permit rules themselves are set out in our guide to the Trakheesi permit.

What do the portals publish about photographs and copy?

Both publish real numbers, and the numbers disagree. Read this table before you build a template, because a single asset set cannot score well everywhere.

Specification	Property Finder	Bayut	dubizzle
Minimum image resolution	800 by 600, or a ratio between 1.3 and 1.8	800 by 600	Not published
Recommended dimensions	4 by 3, for example 1600 by 1200	Landscape only, portrait rejected	Not published
Maximum images	30	Not published	Not published
Minimum images	4 for a studio, rising to 10 for 4 beds	Not published	At least one, an ad with none is not activated
Maximum file size	10 MB	Not published	Not published
Watermarks	Supported as a feature in PF Expert	Allowed if transparent and not obscuring	Third party watermarks banned
Title length	30 to 50 characters	40 to 80 characters recommended	Not published
Description length	750 to 2,000 characters	Minimum 300 characters, no cap	Not published

A sourcing note you should carry with those figures. Property Finder's UAE help centre is now behind an agent login, so the Property Finder figures above come from archived snapshots of Property Finder's own UAE help centre and from its publicly readable Qatar and Bahrain instances, which run the same product. They are the portal's own words rather than a third party's, and they are dated, but check the current numbers with your account manager before you rebuild a workflow around them.

Beyond the numbers, both portals police image content. Property Finder requires at least one photo of each room and amenity, naming bathrooms, kitchens, living areas and bedrooms, bars duplicate images and collages, requires interiors to be cleaned and tidied, and accepts developer renders for off plan provided they are diverse. Bayut bans contact details on the image outright, and explains why in commercial terms: an agent number, email or agency website on the picture defeats the portal's lead tracking. It also bars banners, tags, text, frames, photoshopped effects, collages and near duplicate images including the same shot zoomed, rejects images taken from Google Maps or another agency, and makes floor plans mandatory, with listing quality showing yellow until they are added.

Where do the three portals actually contradict each other?

In the places a busy agency is most likely to standardise. A title written to Property Finder's 30 to 50 characters sits below Bayut's recommended 40 to 80, and a title written for Bayut overshoots Property Finder. A description written to Bayut's 300 character minimum falls well short of Property Finder's 750 character floor. Watermarks are a supported feature on Property Finder, a constrained allowance on Bayut, and a removal ground on dubizzle, which bans third party watermarks while permitting its own. Property Finder caps images at 30 where Bayut publishes no cap at all.

There is one clean shared standard, and it is the number to build to: 800 by 600 pixels minimum on both Property Finder and Bayut. Shoot well above it, keep the frame landscape for Bayut, and export at a 4 by 3 ratio for Property Finder, and one set of photographs clears both.

Bayut also contradicts itself on computer generated imagery, which is worth knowing before you argue with a reviewer. Its image standards bar stock and computerised images for Checked and TruCheck listings and its off plan guidance permits renders only for off plan, while its agent portal suggests virtual staging for an unfurnished property. Nothing published reconciles the two, so get your account manager's answer in writing before a campaign depends on it.

What is not published, and which name trips people up?

The gaps matter, because agents fill them with guesses. Neither Property Finder nor Bayut publishes a rule on capital letters or emoji in a listing title beyond Property Finder's note to avoid emoji in descriptions and to avoid the characters and, at and hash in titles. Neither publishes a penalty for reusing description text, since both penalise duplicate listings and duplicate images rather than duplicate copy. Property Finder publishes no expiry for its listing verification, where Bayut publishes 45 days for off plan Checked and TruCheck and stays silent on ready property. dubizzle publishes no property specific image counts, resolutions or character limits at all, and its detailed image guidance is framed around cars.

For dubizzle, the useful fact is structural: dubizzle Property and Bayut share one publishing back end, so Bayut's Profolio rules are effectively the operative rules for dubizzle Property too. And then the name. Dubai has a DLD service called Madmoun, a QR code issued alongside a Trakheesi permit, and Abu Dhabi has ADREC's Madhmoun permit system. One letter apart, different emirates, different obligations. If a colleague says the Madhmoun rule changed, establish which emirate they mean before you touch anything, and read our guide to Madhmoun permits and the other emirates for what the Abu Dhabi one requires. Neither portal publishes a standard for the Arabic half of a bilingual listing either, which is its own problem and is covered in writing the Arabic half of a UAE listing.

Paste the listing, get the whole kit

Throw in whatever you already have, the text and the photographs, exactly as they are. A full marketing kit comes back in English and Arabic, formatted for Property Finder, Bayut and Dubizzle, permit aware across all 7 emirates, in under two hours. The first one is free.

Get your first kit free

Frequently asked questions

Why was my listing rejected when the photographs look fine?

Check orientation first. Bayut accepts landscape only and rejects portrait at review, and a phone shot taken the natural way is portrait. Then look for a logo bar, a frame or a phone number burned into a corner, all named rejection grounds, and count your images against Property Finder's minimum for the bedroom count.

Can I use one title and one description across all three portals?

Not and score well. Property Finder asks for 30 to 50 characters in the title and 750 to 2,000 in the description, and Bayut recommends 40 to 80 characters in the title with a 300 character description minimum. Write the Property Finder version first, since it is the tightest title and the longest body, then adapt.

What happens if a permit expires while the listing is live?

On Property Finder the nightly revalidation catches it and the listing is automatically unpublished until the number is updated. There is no advance warning, which is why expiry tracking belongs in your own system rather than in the portal's.

Does virtual staging get a listing removed?

Bayut's published position points both ways, barring computerised images for its verified listings while its agent portal suggests virtual staging for unfurnished property. Property Finder publishes nothing on virtual staging and accepts developer renders for off plan. Confirm in writing before you rely on it.

Sources

Last verified: 2026-09-02