Is Ras Al Khaimah relatively progressive in its approach to property law?
Out of all the Emirates, RAK is one of the more progressive but the escalation of development has been a little bit slower and so it has been under less pressure than Dubai or Abu Dhabi. They have a Land Department and they have an Investment Authority, which is intended to oversee the process of the escrow accounts and the registration of developers, etc. The Investment Authority’s role was included in the escrow law that was issued recently but I have not yet seen any regulations on how that Authority is going to operate. How prescriptive is the strata law? The strata law is not as comprehensive as the one issued for Dubai. It permits strata title but it doesn’t go into the detail of how it is going to operate (which will be the case in Dubai later this year when the strata regulations are issued). You need those prescriptive laws in terms of how the common ownership must be run and managed and the ability to charge levies to owners to maintain the common areas. Such areas of the law
