Seller Terms and Conditions

1. Who may post as a seller

• 1.1 You may post a property as a seller only if you are its registered owner (named on the title deed or, for off-plan, on the Oqood or initial sale contract) or you are entitled to sell it for the owner: a co-owner with every other co-owner’s written consent; the holder of a notarised power of attorney (if signed abroad, attested and legally translated into Arabic); all the heirs under a court inheritance certificate, or a court-appointed executor; or the authorised signatory of a company that owns it. A guardian may post a minor’s property only with the court’s permission. Say which you are, and show us the proof whenever we ask.
• 1.2 You are not an agent. Licensed brokers, and anyone who markets property for others or for a fee or commission, must register as an agent and accept the Agent Terms of Use. Posting a property you are not entitled to post under clause 1.1 is a breach of these Seller Terms, even with the owner’s consent.
• 1.3 You must be at least 18, have legal capacity under UAE law, and give true and current identity and contact details, including an email address you confirm when we ask. One person, one account; never share your login.
• 1.4 We may ask, before publication or later, for a copy of your Emirates ID or passport, the title deed or Oqood, the sale and purchase agreement, the developer’s latest statement of account or any other supporting document, and may hold, hide or remove a listing until we receive it. We use these papers to check your listing and your right to sell and to enforce these Seller Terms, as our Privacy Policy explains; buyers never see them.

2. Your listing must be true

• 2.1 Every fact in your listing must be true, complete and current: the asking price; the original price (“OP”: the price in your contract with the developer, without the 4% Dubai Land Department fee or any other fee); any amount you state as paid or still owed to the developer; size, bedrooms, building and view; whether the property is vacant, rented or mortgaged; service charges owed; and anything that could stop or delay a sale, such as a court attachment, a dispute or a resale restriction. For commercial property, say whether the price includes 5% VAT.
• 2.2 Your asking price is the full price of the property: what you receive plus any developer balance the buyer takes over, before Land Department fees and any commission. Any discount or “below original price” figure must be your own real figure; never invent a market value. A comparison we show with recorded DLD sales or with your OP is our best-effort label from public records, not a valuation, and we may change or remove it.
• 2.3 Describe your own situation, never someone else’s: you must not say or imply that a named developer, bank, project or community is distressed, insolvent or in trouble.
• 2.4 Photos and plans must show the actual property and be yours to publish (taken by you or licensed to you; for off-plan, the developer’s images, marked as such). No stock photos, no other units, no pictures of people, no unit number or exact floor in the public text or images, and no documents or personal data of anyone else, such as a tenant or a former owner.
• 2.5 No duplicates, no “bait” listings, no property outside the UAE, no listing whose real purpose is to advertise a service, and no property that is already sold, reserved under a signed memorandum of understanding, or no longer yours to sell.
• 2.6 Keep it current. Within 48 hours of the property being sold, reserved, rented out or re-priced, or of your decision to stop selling, mark the listing sold, update it or ask us to remove it. A listing stays live while you keep it current; if we ask whether it is still available and you do not answer, we may hide it.

3. Permits, tenants, mortgages and the law

• 3.1 You alone are responsible for every consent and permit the law of the emirate requires to advertise and sell your property. In Dubai the Land Department requires an advertising permit (Trakheesi) for property advertisements: obtain it through the Land Department or a licensed broker before you post. In Abu Dhabi every property advertisement needs a Madhmoun permit, which only an ADREC-licensed broker can obtain for you: have it before you post. We may ask for a permit number at any time and may refuse or remove a listing without one.
• 3.2 Off-plan. List a property before handover only if your sale and purchase agreement and the developer allow a resale at that stage. The transfer needs the developer’s no-objection certificate and the settlement of anything you owe; those are matters between you, the developer and the buyer.
• 3.3 Tenanted property. A sale does not end the tenancy; the buyer takes over the lease. Respect the tenant’s rights under the tenancy law of the emirate, arrange viewings only with the tenant’s agreement, never publish the tenant’s name, details or belongings, and tell buyers the lease terms (rent, expiry, deposit).
• 3.4 Mortgaged property. Disclose the mortgage, and obtain the lender’s consent where the sale requires it.
• 3.5 You confirm that the property and the money you will receive are not connected with any crime and that you will follow UAE anti-money-laundering, sanctions and tax rules. Transfer fees, developer fees, service charges, mortgage releases and taxes are for you or the buyer to settle, never us.

4. What distress.ae does, and does not do

• 4.1 Free and non-exclusive. We charge sellers no listing fee, no commission and no success fee. If we ever offer paid options, they will be optional and priced clearly before you buy them. You may advertise the same property elsewhere, or through agents, at the same time.
• 4.2 Not a brokerage. distress.ae is an advertising portal licensed for the Portal activity, not a licensed real-estate brokerage. We are not your agent: we do not negotiate, value, draft or hold a memorandum of understanding (DLD Form F), receive or hold deposits or sale money, transfer title, register deeds or deal with the developer or the Land Department for you. Any deal happens directly between you and the buyer, off the platform, at your own risk and with your own advisers (a registration trustee, lawyer or RERA-licensed broker of your choosing).
• 4.3 No promises. We do not guarantee enquiries, a buyer, a price, a timing or a sale, or that anyone who contacts you is who they say they are. Price labels, statistics, calculators, translations and our AI assistant’s answers are guidance only, not valuations or advice.
• 4.4 Our editorial rights. We may review a listing before publication and again after any edit; edit it for display (for example remove a unit number or floor level, shorten a title or correct a building name); translate it; add labels; and decline, hide, suspend or remove it, or limit how many listings an account may post, for a reason in these Seller Terms, the Terms of Service or the law, with or without notice. We tell you why when we decline or remove a listing, unless the law or a safety reason prevents it.
• 4.5 Where your listing appears. Besides distress.ae and our phone app, we may show your listing in our emails and social channels, and search engines index it; you give us the licence in Section 5(f) of the Terms of Service for these uses. After a sale or removal we may show the listing as “sold” or “withdrawn” until it is deleted under the Privacy Policy.

5. Your contact details, buyers and agents

• 5.1 Your number. The phone number and WhatsApp you enter are shown, on request, to signed-in users who press “Show number” or send you an enquiry, after they give us their own name and number, which we pass to you. Showing your number this way is part of the service you ask for when you post; to stop it, ask us to remove the listing. We record each reveal (who, when, IP address) and keep the record for 12 months to protect you from misuse.
• 5.2 Your choice about agents. On each listing you choose “Yes — open to agents” (a signed-in agent who has accepted the Agent Terms can see your number and may call you about a genuine buyer) or “Ask me first” (agents can only send you an enquiry through distress.ae, with their name, number and message; you decide whether to reply, and replying may share your number). You can change the choice at any time. The Agent Terms forbid cold calls, poaching your listing, re-posting it without your written approval, and asking you for upfront fees or commission you did not offer. Report a breach to support@distress.ae; we act on it under the Agent Terms, but cannot guarantee any agent’s behaviour.
• 5.3 Commission. You owe us nothing. If an agent brings you a buyer, any commission is between you, the buyer and that agent: agree it in writing before any viewing (in Dubai, DLD Form A or a signed agreement), check the agent’s broker card (BRN) on the Dubai REST app or the DLD website, and never pay anyone an upfront, “marketing” or “reservation” fee.
• 5.4 Buyers’ details. Use what a buyer sends you, or a Buyer Request you answer, only to deal with that enquiry. Do not add buyers to marketing lists or groups, pass on or sell their details, or message them about anything else.
• 5.5 Stay safe. Send copies of your passport, Emirates ID, title deed or bank details only to us (through your account or support@distress.ae) or to a buyer you have met and verified; never give anyone a one-time code; sign nothing you do not understand. We contact you only from an @distress.ae address or the number under “Business details” on distress.ae, and we never ask you for a payment. Tell us at once if someone claims to act for distress.ae.

Money moves only through the proper channel. In Dubai a buyer’s deposit is normally a manager’s cheque in your name, held by the broker or the registration trustee against a signed Form F until the transfer at a DLD registration trustee office; off-plan transfers go through the developer and the Land Department (Oqood). Nobody from distress.ae will ever hold, request or route your money.

6. Prohibited conduct

You must not:

• (a) post a property you do not own or are not entitled to sell, or pose as its owner;
• (b) state a false price, OP, paid amount, developer balance, size or status; invent a discount; or hide a mortgage, attachment, dispute, arrears or resale restriction;
• (c) upload forged, altered or someone else’s documents or photos;
• (d) run more than one account, or an account for someone else;
• (e) collect, scrape or misuse other users’ details; send spam; or use bots or automated tools;
• (f) use distress.ae to launder money, to evade a tax, fee or permit, or for any other unlawful purpose; harass, threaten, defame or discriminate against anyone; or upload malicious code.

7. Zero tolerance: removal and ban

• 7.1 If we reasonably conclude that you broke Section 6(a), (b), (c) or (f), or otherwise acted fraudulently, we will remove your listings and permanently ban you, without advance notice. Any other breach may lead to a warning, listing removal, suspension or a ban. We may suspend your account or hide a listing while we check a complaint, a document or a buyer’s report.
• 7.2 A ban covers you in every role on distress.ae. You may not return under a new account, directly or through anyone else, and we may block accounts linked to you (same person, phone, email or identity document).
• 7.3 You agree that we may give the Dubai Land Department / RERA, ADREC, the police and any other competent authority the facts of a suspected breach and the relevant evidence, and assist any investigation. We give a private person, such as a buyer you misled, only what the law requires or a court orders.
• 7.4 We will email you the reason for a suspension or ban; we need not name who complained. You may ask for one review within 14 days of that email; the decision stands meanwhile. Not acting on a breach is not a waiver.

8. Responsibility and liability

• 8.1 You alone are responsible for your listing, your documents, your dealings with buyers, agents and the developer, and your compliance with the law, and for anyone who acts for you or with your help; their breaches count as yours.
• 8.2 You will compensate us for any loss, fine, claim or reasonable legal cost we suffer because you broke these Seller Terms or because your listing or documents were untrue, unauthorised or unlawful: for example a regulator’s fine for an unpermitted advertisement, or a claim by a co-owner, tenant, photographer, lender or buyer.
• 8.3 Our service is free and provided as it is. To the extent UAE law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, a lost sale, lost profit or opportunity, the conduct of any buyer, agent or developer, or an error in a label, statistic, translation or AI answer, and our total liability to you is limited to AED 100 (or what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, if more). This does not limit liability for our fraud or gross negligence, or any liability the law does not let us limit.

9. Records and your data

• 9.1 We record your acceptance (date, time, version, IP address and browser), each listing and its edits, your availability answers, the documents you upload, enquiries and reveals of your number, and our emails to you, to run the service and enforce these Seller Terms. Our Privacy Policy says how long each record is kept, what happens to your documents after a listing closes, and how to use your rights under the UAE Personal Data Protection Law (write to support@distress.ae).
• 9.2 If we ban you, we keep your identifying details and the evidence while the ban lasts, even after account deletion.
• 9.3 Once public, your listing may be copied by search engines, AI systems and third parties outside our control, and cached copies may remain after removal.

10. Changes and closing your account

• 10.1 We may update these Seller Terms on at least 7 days’ notice on distress.ae or by email; after a material change you must accept the new version before posting or editing a listing again. If you do not accept, you may ask us to remove your listings and close your account; the old version applies until then.
• 10.2 You may mark a listing sold, or ask us to remove it, at any time, and close your account from the phone app or by email to support@distress.ae. Sections 3.5, 5.4, 7, 8, 9 and 11 still apply afterwards.

11. Law and courts

UAE federal law and the laws of the Emirate of Dubai govern these Seller Terms; the courts of Dubai have exclusive jurisdiction. If a translation differs, the English version applies. If any clause is found invalid, the rest stand. These Seller Terms, the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about posting as a seller. Questions and complaints: support@distress.ae (see “Business details and complaints” on distress.ae).