Golden Visa with Off-Plan or Mortgaged Property: What Qualifies

Almost every secondary account of this route carries a version of the same story: that a property golden visa once required a minimum paid-in amount as well as an asset worth AED 2 million or more, and that the minimum was abolished in January 2024 without an announcement. A figure is usually attached to it.

This post used to carry that story too, sourced to newspaper reporting. It does not any more, because it cannot be sourced to an authority. No ICP, GDRFA or Dubai Land Department page we could reach publishes a minimum down payment for this route, publishes a date on which one was removed, or acknowledges that one ever existed. A rule with no published text has no published wording to rely on, and the claim that it was cancelled is exactly as unsourced as the claim that it applies.

That is not an argument for assuming the opposite. It is an argument for treating the paid-in position as an open question on your own file rather than a settled headline — and for noticing that the Dubai Land Department's service card does impose a paid-amount evidence test on mortgaged applicants, which is a document requirement rather than an eligibility threshold, and which is the nearest thing to the story that is actually published.

The GDRFA's golden residence card for investors is the clearer of the two. It states the condition as owning a property or a group of properties with a total value of no less than AED 2 million, records that mortgaged properties are acceptable, and adds that a lien is placed on the property throughout the ten-year residency and that the property cannot be disposed of while the permit is valid. This aligns with the handling mortgaged property UAE guidelines.

The Dubai Land Department's golden visa investor service card, which is the route most Dubai applicants actually use, takes a narrower line on evidence. Where the property is mortgaged, it asks for a bank letter indicating an AED 2 million paid amount as proof. For assistance with business setup, you might consult Velarozone's advisers.

Those two positions are not the same thing, and pretending otherwise is how applications get submitted and rejected. 'Mortgaged property is acceptable' is a statement about eligibility. 'Produce a bank letter showing AED 2 million paid' is a statement about evidence, and it is the harder of the two to satisfy on a property still being paid down. Before you buy on the strength of the eligibility wording, get the department's position on your specific file in writing. For a broader understanding, consider the golden visa versus investor visa comparison.

An off-plan unit does not have a title deed, because there is nothing yet to hold title to. What it has is a provisional registration: the Dubai Land Department operates a provisional register through which developers record units sold off-plan, and that registration is the ownership evidence available at that stage. That much is published, on the department's own service page for registering an initial sale.

Everything past that point is not. Neither the GDRFA card nor the Dubai Land Department card sets out an off-plan test in its own words. Neither says a provisional registration satisfies the ownership evidence, and neither says it does not. ICP asks for a letter from a land department confirming ownership and value, and does not address the off-plan case either.

So the honest statement is that no authority publishes an off-plan pathway to this route. Secondary guides that say off-plan qualifies “subject to conditions” are not quoting an authority, and neither is the widely circulated claim of a federal policy circular in February 2026 dealing with off-plan and payment thresholds, which we could not verify against any government publication. None of that means an off-plan holding cannot be made to work; it means the question is decided on a file, in advance, and not from a webpage.

Where a mortgage is involved, the bank becomes a participant in the visa application, and banks are slow in a way that surprises people who have just moved quickly on a purchase. The letter is not a standard product at every institution, and it needs to say specific things.

What is published is the requirement itself: the Dubai Land Department's card asks a mortgaged applicant for a bank letter indicating an AED 2 million paid amount as proof. What is not published is the form of that letter, and the longer checklists in circulation — no-objection certificates, outstanding-balance confirmations, good-standing statements — are trade practice rather than an authority's document list. Treat them as a sensible brief to give your relationship manager, not as a published requirement, and ask the bank to show you a template before you rely on it.

The honest summary of this subject is that the eligibility rule is broad and the evidence rule is narrow, and it is the evidence rule that decides files. That asymmetry is not a reason to avoid the route. It is a reason to sequence it properly.

Establish the department's documentary position on your exact facts — off-plan or completed, mortgaged or not, one property or several — before the purchase rather than after. A purchase made on the assumption of eligibility is a purchase you may still be happy with, but it is not a visa, and the two decisions deserve to be made separately.