Mediation centre for realty disputes to start by April

A law will be issued this month to mandate that a mediation centre will now try to settle property disputes before they go to
the Property Court, Emirates Business can reveal.

"The mediation centre, which will be overseen by the Property Court, will become operational in April, thereby speeding up the process of settling all civil property related issues," said Chief Judge Mohammed Yousuf Sulaiman, Deputy Director for Dubai Courts and Cassation Court's Senior Judge.

Cases will be heard by the mediation centre for a maximum of one month after which they will be forwarded to the Property Court. The centre will have representation from the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (Rera) and the Property Court.

Sulaiman said this mediation centre will try and resolve as many civil property disputes as possible and only unresolved cases will be passed to the Property Court for judgement.

"By any law of court, a mediation centre has to be set up to try and resolve as many disputes as possible before it reaches the judges in the courts and that is what we are doing here within the Property Court," said Sulaiman.

"We are seeing a number of cases piling up within the Property Court and we do not want to keep so many pending. We would like to fix these issues as early as possible. We have also noticed that, in some disputes, there is a misunderstandings between the buyer, developer and other parties. In such cases, we will try to resolve the disputes in a friendly manner."

Sulaiman said: "Our other mediation centres set up for labour and family dispute cases have seen positive results and have helped resolve almost 70 per cent of the cases before they were passed on to the courts. The experience of this success made us decide to create a mediation centre for property-related issues."

To register a complaint, an aggrieved party has to register the case with the mediation centre and must try to resolve the dispute within a one month, Sulaiman said. Currently, more than 500 cases are pending with the Property Court.

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