Sobha has put nine projects into a four day window, 20 to 23 August 2026, at the events hall of its sales office. Almost every project is on a 20/80 plan, and most carry a registration fee waiver, a service charge waiver, or both.
I get asked about these events every few weeks, and my answer is always the same shape. A developer promotion is not good or bad on its own. It is good or bad relative to what you were going to do anyway. So rather than list the offers back at you, I want to answer the only question that matters: does this change what you should do this month.
What is actually on the table
Nine lines, one event, and they are not all the same offer.
Read the last column before anything else. Eight of the nine offers only apply to units valued at AED 5 million and above. Sobha Central is the exception with no stated minimum, and Sobha City in Abu Dhabi has no minimum but also no waiver, just a 40/60 plan.
The other thing worth reading twice is how the benefit is released. You book with 2 percent and a purchase request. The waiver itself is only extended once you have paid 10 percent, plus the registration fee where it applies, and signed the booking form. So the incentive is not attached to the booking. It is attached to you getting to 10 percent.
The real product here is not the waiver
Everybody in my inbox is asking about the DLD waiver. That is the smallest part of this.
The actual product is the 20/80 plan. Twenty percent while the thing is being built, eighty percent when it hands over. That structure does one specific job: it lets you commit to a unit today with money you do not have yet.
Think about who that helps. You have decided on a community. You know the building or the cluster you want. You have maybe 10 or 15 percent of the price available now, and the rest is coming from salary, from a business, from a sale back home, or from a mortgage later. Under a ready-property purchase you are simply out of the market until the whole down payment exists. Under 20/80 you are in it now, at today's price, in the unit you picked rather than whatever is left in two years.
That is a real benefit and I do not want to talk anyone out of it. It is also the reason developers offer it. Time is what they are selling you.
Sometimes that price is explicit. At The Archive in DLRC, the post handover plan carries the same unit at 10 percent above the standard list, so you can read exactly what the deferral costs. Sobha's 20/80 does not separate the two, which means the price of the time is in the list price and you cannot see it. That is not a criticism, it is just a reason to compare the total against a resale rather than against the plan next to it.
The other direction exists too. Al Ghadeer Parks by Aldar opens at 5 percent rather than 20 and pushes 45 percent to handover, which is the same trade run the opposite way: a lighter door in exchange for a heavier ending.
Where the 20/80 plan quietly stops closing by itself
Here is the part I have not seen anyone write about this offer, and it is the reason I am writing at all.
The plan is 20 percent now and 80 percent at handover. The obvious way to fund that 80 percent is a mortgage on a completed property. So the question is whether a bank will actually lend you 80 percent.
For an expatriate buying a first property, the UAE Central Bank caps the loan at 80 percent of value up to AED 5 million, and 70 percent above it.
Look at what that does.
- At AED 3 million: you pay 600,000 during construction, the bank lends 2.4 million, and the two numbers meet exactly. No gap.
- At AED 5 million: you pay 1 million, the bank lends 4 million, and again it closes to the dirham.
- At AED 7 million: you pay 1.4 million, the bank will only lend 4.9 million, and you are 700,000 short.
- At AED 10 million: you pay 2 million, the bank lends 7 million, and you are 1 million short.
Now put that next to the offer table. Eight of the nine offers require AED 5 million or more. Which means the moment you qualify for the waiver, you have crossed onto the side of the mortgage cap where 20/80 no longer funds itself.
Sobha Central is the only Dubai apartment offer here with no minimum, and it is therefore the only one where the arithmetic lines up cleanly for a buyer who is genuinely relying on a mortgage at the end.
Two further things widen that hole rather than close it. If this is not your first property in the UAE, the expatriate cap drops to 65 percent and the gap grows by another 5 points. And banks lend against their own valuation, not against your purchase price, so if the valuation at handover comes in under what you paid, the shortfall is yours to fund in cash on the day.
None of this makes the offer bad. It makes it a plan you have to finish. If you take a 20/80 at AED 7 million assuming a mortgage will cover the rest, you need to know now that you are also going to need roughly 10 percent of the price in cash at handover, and you have until 2028 or 2029 to build it. That is a fine plan. It is a terrible surprise.
You can run your own numbers on the mortgage calculator and on the payment plan comparator.
What the waivers are actually worth
Quick arithmetic, because these get quoted as if they were free money.
| Ticket | 2% DLD waiver | 4% DLD waiver | Full DLD fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| AED 5M | Dh100,000 | Dh200,000 | Dh200,000 |
| AED 7M | Dh140,000 | Dh280,000 | Dh280,000 |
| AED 10M | Dh200,000 | Dh400,000 | Dh400,000 |
A 4 percent waiver means the developer pays the whole transfer fee. A 2 percent waiver means they pay half and you pay the other half. On a AED 5 million unit, the difference between the two is Dh100,000, which is worth checking against the specific project before you commit to one over another.
Worth remembering as well that a fee waiver is not the same as a price cut of the same headline percentage. A 4 percent discount beats a 4 percent fee waiver, because the discount also shrinks the fee sitting on top of the price. I worked that through in discount versus DLD fee waiver.
The two year service charge waiver on Hartland II, The Element and the Sanctuary courtyard and garden villas is the quieter benefit and often the larger one on a villa, since service charges land every year whether the unit is let or empty.
When I would not take this offer
Now the other side, and this is what I say on the phone.
If you already hold more than 20 percent of the price in cash, and specifically if you hold enough to match where an existing project has reached in its construction payments, the developer is not your best counterparty. Another buyer is.
There are people who committed to off-plan units in 2024 and 2025 whose circumstances have changed. Some cannot continue the instalments. Some have decided they do not want to. Those people are not negotiating from strength, and some of them will accept a number below what the developer is charging for the same product in the same community today.
The July market backs this up at the top end. Villa transaction value was down 56.4 percent year on year against 27.6 percent for apartments, which tells you the AED 5 million and above segment is where sellers have been slowest to find buyers. That is the exact segment eight of these nine offers sit in. I broke the month down in the July 2026 market update.
The trade offs are real and I will not pretend otherwise:
- You need more cash on day one, because you are reimbursing whatever the original buyer has already paid, typically 30 to 40 percent.
- You take the unit they have, not the unit you would have chosen.
- You pay the 4 percent registration fee on the new price at the Oqood transfer, plus the developer NOC, which for Sobha is market reported at around AED 5,250.
- It is slower. An assignment needs the developer's consent and it is not automatic.
What you get in exchange is a price that was negotiated rather than published, and a shorter wait to handover because somebody else has already served part of the construction period. I compared the two routes properly in off-plan versus secondary.
How I would decide, in one paragraph
If the community is the point and the cash is not there yet, take the plan. Book the unit you want, get to 10 percent so the waiver is actually released, and set yourself a target for the handover cash gap if you are above AED 5 million. If the cash is there, spend this week looking at what existing owners in that same community will accept, and only go back to the developer if nothing on the resale side beats list price after fees. Either way the decision is about your cash position, not about the four day countdown.
Three things to check before the event closes
- Confirm in writing which waiver applies to your exact unit type. Sobha Central splits 1 bedroom at 2 percent against 2 and 3 bedroom plus retail at 4 percent, and the Sanctuary splits courtyard and garden villas against estate villas the same way.
- Confirm the AED 5 million threshold is measured on your unit value, and get the release condition in writing: 2 percent booking, then 10 percent plus registration fee and booking form.
- Check the exclusions. The published terms say the offer does not apply to cancel and swap, upgrades, downgrades or re-bookings, so an existing Sobha buyer moving between units may not qualify at all.
The offer runs to 23 August. If you want me to price a specific unit against what the resale market will do on the same product, send me the details and I will come back with both numbers rather than one.
Frequently asked questions
It runs for four days, 20 to 23 August 2026, at the events hall of the Sobha sales office. The published terms require the unit to be booked or the purchase request approved with a 2 percent booking amount inside that window for the offer to apply.
You pay 20 percent of the price in instalments across the construction period and the remaining 80 percent falls due at handover. Most buyers fund that final 80 percent with a mortgage on the completed property, which is why the mortgage cap matters as much as the plan itself.
Only up to AED 5 million. The UAE Central Bank caps an expatriate first-property mortgage at 80 percent of value up to AED 5 million and 70 percent above it, so on a AED 7 million unit a 20/80 plan leaves roughly 10 percent of the price to fund in cash at handover. A second property drops the cap to 65 percent and widens the gap further.
Sobha Central is the only Dubai apartment offer in this event with no stated minimum value. Sobha City in Abu Dhabi also states no minimum but comes with a 40/60 payment plan and no waiver. Every other line in the offer summary requires AED 5 million or more.
No. A discount at the same headline percentage is worth more, because cutting the price also cuts the 4 percent transfer fee that sits on top of it. A 4 percent waiver on a AED 5 million unit saves Dh200,000; a 4 percent discount saves Dh208,000.
When you already hold enough cash to match where the project has reached in its payment schedule, usually 30 to 40 percent. At that point you can approach an original buyer who cannot or does not want to continue the instalments and negotiate a price, rather than pay the developer list price. You pay the 4 percent registration fee on the new price plus the developer NOC, and you take whichever unit that seller holds.