<a href="http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100515/BUSINESS/705159921/1005">Developers are beginning to file claims with the <b>Land Department</b> to cancel the contracts</a> of buyers who are defaulting on payments that have come due (including the <b>Burj Khalifa</b>). This comes after more than a year and a half of waiting while the regulators issued new laws and then refined them in regulations and amendments. Finally, there is an established law to regulate this "cleaning out" process, but there are still serious concerns from lawyers and investors over the fairness of the system. Most notably, there are the buyers at<b> Beachfront Living </b>(an <b>Omniyat Properties</b> project) <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100515/BUSINESS/705159949/1005">who have paid 20 per cent for apartments in a building that only just started construction</a>. To make matters more complicated, the project is located in <b>Nakheel</b>'s stalled Waterfront master planned community near Jebel Ali...<br/><br/>Here is a new legal report out from <b>Al Tamimi & Co</b>. about the the regulations for Law No. 13 of 2008 that explains in better detail the latest developments on this front.<br/><br/> Dubai has long been at the forefront of regulations and laws for the property sector. With a landmark law in 2006, it became the first emirate to allow foreigners to fully own property in specified areas. However, the regulations to control the buying and selling of off-plan property only began coming out as the property recession began to hit Dubai. The difficulty for the Real Estate Regulatory Agency and Dubai Land Department has been to create a balance of rights between the two sides, allowing for cancellations of contracts in situations where either one fails to live up to their obligations. Abu Dhabi and the other emirates have not yet issued such detailed laws to handle disputes and have instead left them to the civil courts. <b>Law 13 of 2008 -- Regulations for the real estate register</b> This was a new set of laws to regulate off-plan sales that restricted the developer from charging for resales. It also contained the first article that dealt with a default scenario, stipulating that developer could take 30 per cent of the funds paid by a defaulting buyer if they did not pay within 30 days of being notified they were in arrears. A policy directive from Rera temporarily changed the amount that developers could take to 30 per cent of the price of the home, which was meant to slow down claims until a new law was created. <b>Law 9 of 2009</b> This law amended Law 13 of 2008 to create a sliding scale for situations where a property buyer defaults on their payments. It said that in cases where a developer had made significant construction progress, it could keep larger portions of the defaulting buyer's money. For instance, where a buyer has failed to pay in a project that has completed at least 80 per cent, the developer could keep the full amount they had paid and auction the property off. If the developer had not made any progress for reasons within its control, then it could only keep 30 per cent of the amount paid by the defaulting buyer. The law also described starting construction as "construction works have commenced in accordance with the designs approved by the Concerned Authorities". The law also gave the Real Estate Regulatory Agency the power to cancel a project and order a developer to refund buyers in full. <b>Decree 6 of 2010</b> This law contained the regulations for Law 13 of 2008 and added more details to the concepts first laid out in Law 9 of 2009. It also increased the power of the Land Department to mediate disputes in the property sector with "binding" decisions. It set out for the first time the procedures for a buyer to cancel a contract based on the failure of the developer to proceed as planned. A buyer could cancel if the developer went bankrupt, significantly changed the plans for the project, or did not bind payments to construction milestones. It further defined construction as "acts of levelling and instalment of the project's infrastructure".