Qatar — Compliance Defaults

Properties with jurisdiction QA get the Qatar rule-set instead of an Australian state's. The shape is different from AU: obligations are building-level and fall on the landlord/FM, and the sharpest deadlines are administrative (Civil Defence certificate, lease registration, deposit return), not appliance checks.

Documentation is split per market: this page covers Qatar only. For Australian portfolios see Australia — State Defaults.

warning

Same disclaimer as the AU rules: these are operational reminders based on typical Qatar jurisdiction defaults, not legal advice. You remain responsible for interpreting the rules that apply to your buildings.

Cadence rules (recurring, per property)

Generated on property creation, roll forward on completion — same engine as the AU rules (migrations V29+).

Rule	Cadence	Source
QCDD fire safety certificate renewal	12 months	Law 9/1993 (Civil Defence); needs an active Annual Maintenance Contract with a QCDD-approved fire company. A lapsed certificate blocks Commercial Registration renewal
Elevator preventive maintenance	12 months	Landlord obligation in tower stock
Central AC / chiller service	12 months	Landlord obligation; schedule before the May heat
Kahramaa electrical infrastructure	24 months	Transformer rooms + fixed electrical
Insurance renewal	12 months	Universal practice
Routine inspection	6 months	Per lease terms (no statutory cadence in Qatar)

Lease-triggered timers (per lease, one-shot)

These do not run on a calendar cadence. Recording a lease spawns them automatically (GenerateLeaseTriggeredComplianceTasks), and completing them does not schedule a next occurrence — the next lease brings its own countdown.

Rule	Trigger	Deadline	Source
Lease registration	Lease start	30 days	Law 4/2008 art. 20 — register with the Municipality's Lease Contract Registration Office; fee 1% of annual rent, paid by the lessor. Late registration draws escalating surcharges: +25% / +50% / +75% / +100% by month overdue. Unregistered leases are also rejected by the Rental Dispute Settlement Committee — no legal recourse against the tenant until registered
Deposit return	Lease end	14 days	Standard lease practice, not a statutory deadline — verify the lease terms. What IS statutory (Law 4/2008 art. 7): the residential security deposit may not exceed two months' rent

Behaviour details:

• Fixed-term lease → both timers: registration due start + 30d (created immediately), deposit due end + 14d (created immediately, sits UPCOMING until the end approaches).
• Periodic lease (no end date) → registration timer only; there is no known end to count the deposit from.
• Backdated, already-ended lease → no registration task (that window is long gone), but the deposit task IS created if its 14-day window is still open — import a tenancy that ended yesterday and the deposit clock is live.
• Renewal → new dates, new countdowns. Re-posting identical dates is idempotent (no duplicates).
• Rule columns: lease_triggered, trigger_event (LEASE_START | LEASE_END), trigger_deadline_days on compliance_rules. The engine is jurisdiction-agnostic — an AU lease-triggered rule (e.g. a bond-lodgement deadline) would ride it as pure config.

The agency's own Aqarat license

Agency-level, not property-level: the agency's license from the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Law 22/2017). Stored on the agency row (aqarat_license_number, aqarat_license_expires_on, migration V36), edited in Settings (visible for QAR-currency agencies), surfaced as an app-wide banner from 60 days before expiry. Same pattern as contractor insurance expiry — no compliance-task machinery involved.

Law 4/2008 — verified article map

From the primary text on Al-Meezan (Qatar's official legal portal). The useful ones for product features:

Article	What it says
Art. 4–5	Lessor must deliver premises fit for purpose and carries the maintenance duty. Art. 5 gives the tenant a self-repair-and-deduct right if the lessor delays after written notice — a fact worth surfacing in dispute packs
Art. 7	Residential security deposit capped at two months' rent
Art. 8–9	Lessee care duty; utilities on the lessee unless agreed otherwise
Art. 10	Rent increases only per Council of Ministers decree rules (not a flat ban — earlier "no mid-lease rises" phrasing was oversimplified)
Art. 11	Rent due within 7 days; lessee may deposit with the Committee treasury if lessor refuses receipt
Art. 12–13	Leases bind a new owner; new owner must notify lessee within 30 days of title registration
Art. 14	No subletting/assignment without written lessor consent
Art. 19 (as amended by Law 20/2009)	Eviction grounds: non-payment, unauthorised subletting, misuse, demolition (authority-ordered or lessor-intended, 15+ year buildings), major modification (6-month notice), lessor/family personal use (6-month notice) — the raw material for QA notice drafting
Art. 20	Lease registration: 30 days, 1% fee on the lessor, escalating late surcharges
Art. 21–22	Rental Dispute Settlement Committee: judge-chaired, exclusive jurisdiction over Law 4/2008 tenancy disputes

RDSC — procedure facts

• Filing fee QAR 100; procedures set by Council of Ministers Resolution No. 37 of 2008.
• Decisions appealable to the competent Court of Appeal within 15 days (from announcement, or the day after an in-absentia decision).
• Rulings typically issue within weeks — fast relative to court tracks.

Notices (QA jurisdiction)

Qatar has no statutory notice forms — and the drafters now use the verified regime end-to-end instead of adapting AU wording:

• Arrears ladder (QA): friendly reminder → formal written demand citing art. 19 (unexcused non-payment as an eviction ground) → notice of intended eviction application to the Rental Dispute Settlement Committee (with the QAR 100 filing fee and 15-day appeal window stated). No "statutory period" or invented form names.
• Entry notices (QA): governed by the lease terms, phrased "per the lease" — the AU minimum-notice ladder is applied as reasonable practice only.
• RDSC pre-filing advisory: every QA arrears draft ships with a "Before you file" checklist in the UI — verify the Municipality lease registration (the Committee refuses claims on unregistered leases, art. 20), the QAR 100 fee, and the 15-day appeal window.

Still open: art. 19's two 6-month-notice eviction paths (owner personal use, demolition/modification) as dedicated notice types.

Sector regulation + data (context for Stages 3–4)

• Aqarat (General Authority for Regulating the Real Estate Sector, Cabinet Resolution 28/2023) licenses developers AND property-management / maintenance companies; real-estate development licenses run 3 years, renewable. Platforms: QREP (qrep.aqarat.gov.qa) + the preliminary real estate registry. Law 5/2024 replaced the 1964 title-registration statute; implementing regulations issued June 2025.
• QCDD certificate is 1 year (matches our 12-month rule). Applies to commercial buildings above 500 m²; applications via the Hukoomi portal with an approved fire-safety consultant; renewal = desktop review if unchanged, fresh inspection if modified.
• PDPPL (Law 13/2016) — Qatar's data-protection law: cross-border personal-data transfers need adequate protection and, per current guidance, approval/safeguards via the competent authority (NCSA). Qatar's Cloud Policy Framework does NOT mandate blanket data residency for ordinary sectors — relevant to the Stage 3.4 data-residency decision: offshore hosting is defensible with safeguards, but transfer-impact documentation will be expected by enterprise buyers.

RDSC dispute packs

The case-pack assembler is jurisdiction-aware. For a QA property it produces an RDSC-framed pack instead of a tribunal one:

• Framing — "the Committee" (not "the tribunal"), "security deposit" (not "bond"), no invented statutory form names; relief templates phrased as plain requests to the Committee.
• Lease & registration evidence (leaseEvidence on the response) — factual lines from PMFriend's records: lease terms per lease, plus the Municipality-registration status. If no completed LEASE_REGISTRATION task exists for the property, the pack carries a prominent CAUTION: the RDSC generally does not accept claims on unregistered leases (Law 4/2008 art. 20) — verify and attach the certificate before filing. The drafter also sees these lines as background so the narrative can reference registration status without inventing anything.
• Disclaimer — QA packs get an RDSC-specific disclaimer that makes no guarantee about admissibility or outcome, and notes that RDSC documents may be required in Arabic (Arabic prevails). Record statements only, never legal conclusions.

AU packs are byte-for-byte unchanged: same tribunal framing, same disclaimer, empty leaseEvidence.

See also

• Qatar Market Roadmap — what shipped, what's gated on a paying signal
• Magic-Link Dispatch — includes the worker task-translation feature