Terms of service

1. Acceptance and eligibility

By creating a Habanto account or otherwise using the Service, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by these Terms and our Privacy policy.

You must be at least 18 years old to use Habanto. Habanto is not intended for, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from, anyone under 18.

If you are using Habanto on behalf of a company, partnership, or other legal entity, you confirm you have authority to bind that entity to these Terms, and "you" in these Terms means both you personally and that entity.

2. What Habanto is, and what it is not

Habanto is a property listings marketplace for the United Arab Emirates. Verified property professionals and owners publish homes for rent and for sale, and people looking for a home search, save, enquire, book viewings, and make offers. We provide the platform, the verification described in Section 5, and the tools that let the two sides reach each other.

Habanto is not a licensed real estate brokerage and does not provide brokerage services. We do not act for buyers, sellers, owners, or seekers, we do not negotiate on anyone’s behalf, and we take no commission on any tenancy or sale.

Habanto is not a party to any tenancy contract, sale and purchase agreement, reservation, offer, or other agreement you reach with another member. Those are between you and that other party alone, and we are not responsible for whether either of you performs them.

We do not hold, transfer, or handle rent, deposits, purchase prices, or any other money passing between members. The only payments on Habanto are the fees professionals pay us for the Service, set out in Section 8.

Nothing on Habanto is legal, tax, valuation, or investment advice. Prices, availability, sizes, charges, and terms shown on a listing come from the professional or owner who published it, and can change.

2.1 Building directory research

Habanto researches its building directory one building at a time and compiles each record from public sources. A building record is not confirmed by the developer unless that developer has claimed the building.

3. Your account

You can browse Habanto without an account. An account is required to save a home, send an enquiry, request a callback, book a viewing, make an offer, send a message, or publish anything.

You must give us accurate, current, and complete information when you sign up, and keep it up to date. You are responsible for everything that happens on your account, so keep your sign-in details safe. Tell us right away at info@habanto.com if you think your account has been compromised.

You may sign in with email and password, Google, or Apple. If you sign in with a third-party provider, that provider’s terms also apply to that sign-in.

We may suspend or close any account that contains information we reasonably believe is false, misleading, or fraudulent, or that has been used in breach of these Terms.

4. Roles on Habanto

Habanto has four roles. One account can hold more than one of them. By choosing a role, or being invited into one by another member, you agree to the provisions for that role in addition to the general Terms.

4.1 Seekers

A seeker is anyone looking for a home to rent or buy. As a seeker you can search and browse listings, save homes, follow a guided journey, send an enquiry, request a callback, book a viewing, make an offer, and message the professional or owner on a listing. All of this is free.

An offer or a viewing request you send through Habanto is a request to the professional or owner on that listing. It is not a binding contract. Nothing you do on Habanto commits you to a tenancy or a purchase, and nothing commits the other side to accept.

Give accurate information in your enquiries. Contact details you receive through Habanto are for dealing with that home, and not for marketing.

4.2 Agents

An agent is a licensed real estate broker acting for owners. To publish on Habanto you submit your broker registration number, and, where your emirate requires it, your affiliation with a licensed brokerage. Your profile is not treated as verified anywhere on Habanto until we have confirmed it.

You warrant that you hold a valid licence to broker property in every emirate you publish in, that you hold the owner’s authority for every unit you publish, and that you keep both current. Tell us if either lapses.

Changing a field your verification rests on, such as your broker registration number, your emirate, or your brokerage, returns your profile to review until we have confirmed it again.

4.3 Agencies

An agency is a licensed brokerage. To be verified you submit your office registration number, and we confirm it before your profile is treated as verified.

An agency does not own a listing on Habanto. Its roster agents publish under their own verified profiles, and each of them answers for their own listings. You are responsible for keeping your roster accurate, including removing agents who have left.

4.4 Owners

An owner is an individual or entity that owns a property in the UAE. You may publish your own units, appoint an agent to publish on your behalf, and confirm ownership of a unit so that a listing on it can go live.

You warrant that, for every unit you publish or authorise, you are the registered owner or you hold a written, lawful authorisation from the owner. Habanto relies on that warranty and on the ownership document you provide.

Ownership evidence is required for every listing, in all seven emirates, before it can go live. Where an agent publishes your unit, we may ask you to confirm that they act for you and to provide the ownership document yourself.

5. Verification

Verification is the core of Habanto. Nothing goes live until it has been checked.

Every listing submitted to Habanto is checked before it can appear to anyone. A listing is either reviewed by a member of our team, or cleared by automated validation against the data, documents, and permit references submitted with it. Some listings always go to a reviewer regardless: the first listing from a given professional, a price outside the plausible range for that area, an ownership document number or advertising permit number already used elsewhere, anything that has been reported, a listing from a professional whose own profile is not yet verified, and a random sample of everything else.

A listing that fails review is rejected rather than published, and the reason reaches the professional who submitted it so it can be corrected and resubmitted.

Professionals are verified separately from their listings. Before a profile is treated as verified anywhere on Habanto, we confirm the documents and registration references behind it, such as a broker registration number, an office registration number, or a trade licence.

Our verified mark is deliberately narrower than publication. A listing carries it only where a person reviewed it. Ownership of a specific unit is only ever confirmed by a person reading an ownership document, never by an automated check.

What verification is not: it means we checked documentary evidence at a point in time. It is not a guarantee that every fact in a listing is accurate, that a licence or permit remains valid, that a property is in the condition or still available as described, or of how any member will behave. You are responsible for your own due diligence before you commit to anything.

Documents you upload for verification are never shown publicly. How we handle them is described in our Privacy policy.

6. Publishing rules

One unit, one listing. A unit may carry only one active listing on Habanto at a time. Publishing the same unit more than once, or republishing it to gain visibility, is not allowed.

Up to three agents. A single listing may carry up to three agents. Where more than one agent is on a listing, an enquiry goes to one of them rather than to all of them.

Advertising permits are your responsibility, not ours. Where the emirate you publish in requires permission to advertise a property, obtaining it, keeping it valid, and publishing only within it are yours. Dubai requires a Trakheesi advertising permit number and the permit document. Abu Dhabi requires a Madhmoun permit, and an agent publishing there also provides a brokerage licence number. Ajman requires its own advertising permission reference. Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah require, for off-plan, a declaration that you hold the written authorisation of the party entitled to give it. We check the format of what you submit and we record it. We do not, and cannot, confirm that a permit stays valid after that.

Accuracy. Every fact you publish about a unit must be accurate: size, bedroom and bathroom count, floor, view, condition, furnishing, completion status, price, and terms. Photos must be of the unit or of its building, and must not be edited to hide or invent a material feature.

Building content belongs to the building. A building’s description, layouts, and canonical photos come from the developer record for that building and are not rewritten for each listing. What you supply is that unit’s own specifics.

Keep it current. Withdraw or update a listing as soon as the home is no longer available, or a fact about it changes.

7. Content standards, and our right to remove

What is and is not allowed on Habanto is set out in our Content moderation policy at habanto.com/legal/moderation, which forms part of these Terms. In summary: no fraudulent listings, no duplicate listings, no misrepresented property facts, no advertising without the permission your emirate requires, nothing offensive or discriminatory, no spam, no impersonation, and nothing unlawful under UAE law.

Reporting. Signed-in members can report a listing, a public professional profile, a review, or a conversation, using the report control on the page where it appears. If you have no account, or the content has no report control, write to info@habanto.com or use the contact form at habanto.com/contact.

What we can do. We may reject a listing before it is published, take a published listing down, restore a listing if we got it wrong, hide a review from a public profile, suspend an account, and close an account. A takedown and a suspension are both reversible. Every one of these actions is recorded internally with the reviewer, the action, and the reason, and the reason for a listing decision is sent to the professional responsible for it.

We do not owe you publication. We may decline to publish, or remove, any content we reasonably believe breaches these Terms, the Content moderation policy, or any law, or that puts other members at risk.

If you disagree with a decision, the Content moderation policy explains how to correct and resubmit, and how to ask us to look at it again.

8. Fees

Habanto is free for seekers. Searching, browsing, saving, enquiring, booking viewings, and making offers cost you nothing.

Fees for professionals are as published on the site and in your console before you commit to anything. All amounts are in UAE dirhams and are exclusive of VAT unless stated otherwise.

8.1 Listing fees

Listing charges do not apply during invite beta or before public launch. The first three months from the announced public launch date are free. This is one shared launch period; creating, relisting or transferring a listing does not restart it. Payment details are not required to join the beta.

After the free period, each live publishing placement costs AED 49 per month. Each additional agent publishing on the same property has a separate placement. An agency may pay for authorized placements of agents on its roster; the same placement is not charged again to that agent. Where bulk plans are offered, their prices and terms are shown before purchase.

The developer unlimited plan costs AED 999 per month per development and covers the units within that development, not the developer’s entire portfolio. Other plan options and their prices are shown before purchase.

8.2 Featured placements

A featured placement or a top spot is a one-off purchase for a fixed period, at the price shown to you at checkout before you pay. It is separate from the free period above: a placement is charged when you buy it, whether or not the listing itself is still in its free months.

A placement can only be bought on a listing that no more than one agent holds. A placement buys position, not preference in any other sense, and it never changes how a listing is verified or reviewed.

8.3 Payment

Payments are processed by Stripe. By paying through Habanto you also agree to Stripe’s terms. Habanto does not store your card details; Stripe holds them in their own systems.

8.4 Refunds

We do not offer refunds as a matter of policy. Amounts already charged are not refunded where a listing is withdrawn, taken down, or expires part way through a cycle, and we do not prorate a partial cycle. Nothing in this section removes a right you have under UAE law.

8.5 VAT

Where Habanto is registered for VAT, we will issue tax invoices for our services in accordance with the rules of the UAE Federal Tax Authority. You remain responsible for your own tax position, including your own VAT registration and invoicing where that applies to you.

8.6 Changes to fees

We may change our fees by giving you at least 30 days’ notice by email or in your console. If you do not agree, you can withdraw your listings and stop publishing before the change takes effect.

9. Your content

You keep ownership of the photos, descriptions, and other content you post on Habanto ("Your Content"). By posting Your Content, you grant Habanto a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, display, copy, transmit, and adapt Your Content only as needed to operate the Service, for example showing your listing in search results and on the page for the building it sits in. This licence ends when Your Content is deleted, except for backup copies kept for the period stated in our Privacy policy.

You warrant that Your Content is yours to share, or that you have permission from everyone shown in it, and that it does not infringe anyone’s rights, is not defamatory, and is not unlawful under UAE law.

A building’s canonical photos and layouts belong to the developer record for that building. A listing inherits them and cannot delete or reorder them. Your own photos sit alongside them and stay yours.

10. Acceptable use

You may not, and may not let anyone else, use Habanto to: break UAE law, including the Cybercrimes Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2021), the Personal Data Protection Law, and intellectual property law; defame, harass, threaten, or impersonate anyone; upload another person’s photograph or identity document without their consent; misrepresent an Emirates ID, broker registration number, office registration number, trade licence, title deed, advertising permit, or any other government identifier; advertise a property you have no authority to advertise; publish the same unit more than once; send unsolicited marketing through Habanto messaging; probe, scan, or attempt to breach Habanto’s security; or use Habanto to coordinate activity that breaches building, planning, or civil defence rules in the UAE.

No automated collection. You may not scrape, crawl, or extract listings, photos, profiles, or directory content from Habanto by automated means, and you may not copy, republish, or use that content to build a competing database.

11. Service availability and liability

11.1 As is

We work hard to keep Habanto reliable and useful, but we provide the Service "as is" and "as available". We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error free, or secure against every possible attack, nor that any particular professional or owner will behave in any particular way.

11.2 Limits on liability

To the maximum extent permitted by UAE law: we are not liable to you for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or loss of goodwill arising from your use of Habanto; our total aggregate liability to you arising from or relating to the Service in any 12 month period is capped at the greater of AED 1,000 or the total fees you paid to Habanto in that same 12 month period; and nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded under UAE law, for example liability for death, personal injury caused by our negligence, or fraud.

12. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Habanto and its directors, officers, employees, and agents from any claim, demand, loss, or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising from: your breach of these Terms or any law; Your Content; your dealings with any other Habanto member; or your misrepresentation of any identifier, document, permit, or warranty you have given Habanto.

13. Disputes

13.1 Talk to us first

If you have a problem with Habanto, email info@habanto.com or use the contact form at habanto.com/contact before escalating. We try to resolve issues within 10 business days.

13.2 Disputes with another member

A dispute about a tenancy, a sale, a commission, a deposit, or a professional’s conduct is between you and that other party. Habanto is not a party to it and cannot decide it.

We will point you to the right body for your emirate, for example the Rental Dispute Settlement Centre at the Dubai Land Department, or the relevant land or real estate regulator elsewhere. Nothing in these Terms requires you to come to us before going to a regulator or an authority.

13.3 Formal dispute resolution

If we cannot resolve a dispute between you and Habanto informally, it will be resolved by the competent courts of the United Arab Emirates.

14. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the federal law of the United Arab Emirates.

15. Termination, suspension, and deletion

15.1 Closing your account

You can delete your account at any time from your account settings, or by emailing info@habanto.com. Deleting your account removes your account and the personal data we hold for it, including the verification documents you uploaded, apart from the records we are required or permitted to keep, which are described in our Privacy policy.

Deleting your account also withdraws any listing you hold from the public site and ends any subscription attached to it. Amounts already charged are not refunded, in line with Section 8.4.

15.2 Our right to suspend or close

We may suspend or close your account, with or without notice, if you breach these Terms or the Content moderation policy, if your continued use poses a risk to other members or to Habanto, or if we are required to by law. A suspended member cannot sign in, and listings published by that member stop appearing on the public site. Suspension is reversible, and we will lift it if we conclude we got it wrong.

15.3 What survives

Sections that by their nature should survive termination will survive, including Section 9 (the licence covering our retained backups), Section 10, Section 11, Section 12, Section 13, Section 14, and Section 16.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the product changes. If a change is material we will give at least 30 days’ notice by email or in-app message, and your continued use of Habanto after it takes effect means you accept the new Terms. If you do not accept, you can close your account before it takes effect.

We keep an archive of past versions. Ask us at info@habanto.com if you want a copy.

17. Miscellaneous

Entire agreement: together with the Privacy policy and the Content moderation policy, these Terms are the full agreement between you and Habanto. Severability: if any clause is held unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. No waiver: our not enforcing a right does not waive it. Assignment: you cannot assign your rights or obligations under these Terms without our consent; we can assign ours to a successor in the business. Notices: notices to you may be sent to your registered email address, and notices to us to info@habanto.com. Language: these Terms are written in English, and the English version is the binding one.

18. Contact

Habanto FZ-LLC, registered in the Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone (RAKEZ), United Arab Emirates. Email: info@habanto.com. The registered office address, trade licence number, and tax registration number will be published here in the final version of these Terms.