RICS Compliant Valuations in Dubai: What Investors, Lenders and Owners Need to Know

RICS Compliant Valuations in Dubai: What Investors, Lenders and Owners Need to Know

In most markets, choosing a valuer is a matter of judgement. In Dubai it is partly a matter of regulation, and that distinction catches out more investors than it should.

The valuation profession here is regulated by RERA under the Dubai Land Department. Valuers are entered on a Roll, firms are separately accredited, and a valuer is required to carry their registration number on the reports they issue. A valuation produced outside that framework may be perfectly competent and still not be accepted where it matters.

In the instructions that come to us from lenders and auditors, the requirement is almost never for a particular outcome. It is for a report that a third party can rely on: prepared by someone entitled to prepare it, on a stated basis of value, with the evidence identified and the assumptions visible.

Two Standards, Not Two Alternatives

RICS compliance and local registration are frequently discussed as though an owner must choose between them. They operate at different levels. Registration establishes who may value property in Dubai and under what local standards; RICS Red Book compliance governs how the valuer conducts the instruction, from conflict checks through to how assumptions and limitations are recorded.

A report can therefore satisfy one and not the other, which is precisely the gap worth closing before an instruction begins rather than after a lender has queried it.

Why Third Parties Insist On It

A lender advancing against an asset relies on an opinion formed by someone with no interest in the loan proceeding. An auditor signing off a carrying value needs the same independence. In a dispute, a valuation that documents its reasoning survives examination, while one that states a figure and little else does not.

The practical consequence is that two properly conducted valuations of the same asset can differ and both remain defensible. What the standards remove is not variation in judgement but variation in rigour. Three points are worth establishing before instructing:

• That the firm is accredited and the individual valuer registered for the work in question
• That the purpose of the valuation, and the basis of value it requires, is agreed in writing before work begins
• That any relationship between the valuer and the parties to the transaction is disclosed at the outset

For investors and owners in Dubai, the practical test is a simple one. A valuation commissioned for your own decision needs only to satisfy you. A valuation that a bank, an auditor, a court or the Land Department will rely on has to satisfy them, and in this market that is a question of who prepared it as much as what it says.

To discuss a valuation instruction, our Valuation and Advisory team can be reached at chestertonsmena.com/our-services/valuation.