I once spent a week convinced that a specific transit pass in a city where I was working as a refugee resettlement advisor required a physical stamp from a notary. I told three families they couldn’t travel across the border until Tuesday because the notary was out on a fishing trip.

I was wrong. I had hallucinated a requirement based on a single, off-hand comment made by a weary desk clerk who had been there since the eighties. I had prioritized the “way it’s always been” over the actual, written law, and in doing so, I became the very obstacle I claimed to hate.

I had confused a habit with a mandate, and I let three families sit in a cramped terminal for forty-eight hours longer than necessary because I didn’t have the sense to ask where the rule was actually written down.

The Danger of the Unwritten

That is the danger of the unwritten. We assume that because a rule isn’t codified in a leather-bound manual, it must be flexible, but the inverse is almost always true. A written rule has an author, a date of birth, and usually, a sunset clause or a review cycle. It can be challenged because its boundaries are visible.

An unwritten policy, however, is a phantom. It is a ghost that haunts the hallways of an office, whispered from a senior manager to a junior associate, gaining the weight of religious dogma as it travels.

You see this most clearly in the Dubai rental market, specifically in the “one cheque only” obsession.

Take a typical leasing coordinator sitting in a glass-walled office in Business Bay. She opens the owner file for a two-bedroom apartment in Al Furjan. The property is nice-high ceilings, decent balcony, views of a construction site that might be a park in three years. She looks at the field for “Payment Terms.” Someone typed “1 chq” into that box in 2019.

It was a different world then. Interest rates were in a different zip code, the owner was living in the UAE, and the supply-demand curve looked like a very different mountain range.

But nobody has touched that field in five years. The owner has since moved to Singapore, refinanced the mortgage through a bank that doesn’t care about cheque counts as long as the monthly payment hits the escrow, and would likely prefer the absolute certainty of a guaranteed settlement over the physical paper of a cheque.

Yet, no process exists to ask him. The leasing coordinator tells the agent, the agent tells the tenant, and the tenant asks why. The answer travels back up the chain: “The owner insists on one cheque.”

He is merely the silent beneficiary of a decision he forgot he made. The institutional memory of a real estate brokerage often masquerades as prudent risk mitigation, but honestly, it’s usually just Dave from accounting being too lazy to update a spreadsheet or a coordinator who is terrified of “bothering” a client with a better option.

How many millions of dirhams are currently sitting in escrow or unspent savings simply because no one asked the landlord if he’d like his money differently?

The tragedy is that the rule outlives its author, then it outlives its reason, and finally, it becomes the very thing everyone points to when asked why something cannot be done. It is not a strategy, but a reflex. It is not a preference, but a fossil.

Opening the Same Old Files

I’ve been sitting here for the last hour, checking the fridge three times for new food. I know there is nothing in there but a half-empty jar of pickles and some wilted kale, yet I keep looking, hoping that the act of opening the door will somehow manifest a sandwich.

We do this with our business processes too. We keep opening the same old files, looking at the same old “1 chq” requirements, and expecting the market to magically adapt to our stagnation.

The “one cheque” policy is a perfect example of a zombie decision-a choice that died years ago but continues to walk the earth, eating the brains of otherwise intelligent negotiators. In 2019, asking for one cheque was a way to filter for high-net-worth tenants in a market that felt volatile. Today, in a more mature, fintech-driven ecosystem, it is often a barrier to occupancy.

The landlord doesn’t actually want a piece of paper; the landlord wants the liquidity of a single settlement. This is where the distinction between “one cheque” and “one settlement” becomes vital. The two have been conflated for so long that we’ve forgotten they are different things.

The cheque is just the delivery mechanism-and a clumsy, high-friction one at that. If you could offer the landlord the same lump sum of AED 82,400 without making the tenant empty their entire savings account in a single morning, the landlord wouldn’t care if the money came from a cheque, a wire transfer, or a very well-trained carrier pigeon.

The mismatch is purely structural. We have tenants who earn monthly, yet we demand they pay annually.

It’s like asking someone to buy a year’s worth of groceries on January 1st and then act surprised when they’re hungry by October. We’ve built a system that punishes the monthly earner for the crime of not being a millionaire on moving day.

What companies like SplitRent have realized is that the “unwritten policy” of the landlord is actually a very simple, written desire: “I want my money upfront and I want to know it’s safe.”

They’ve managed to decouple the landlord’s need for a single settlement from the tenant’s need for monthly cash flow. By using an AI-driven screening process-one that looks at actual bank statements and salary certificates rather than just a credit score that might not even exist for a new expat-they can pay the landlord the full year in one go.

This satisfies the ghost of the 2019 decision while acknowledging the reality of 2024. The landlord gets his “one cheque” equivalent (the settlement), and the tenant gets to keep their savings for things like furniture, school fees, or, I don’t know, actually eating.

The institutional inertia that keeps “one cheque” alive is fueled by a fear of the unknown. If a property manager suggests a twelve-payment plan to an owner, they fear the owner will think they are losing control. But that fear is based on a version of the owner that might not exist anymore.

That owner in Al Furjan? He’s probably stressed about his own bills in Singapore. He’d likely be thrilled to know his Dubai asset is secured by a professional fintech platform rather than a post-dated cheque that might bounce if the tenant has a bad month.

We cling to these unwritten rules because they provide a false sense of order. If I can say “the policy is one cheque,” I don’t have to think. I don’t have to negotiate. I don’t have to understand the nuances of modern finance or the benefits of card-based rewards. I can just be a cog in a machine that was built by someone who isn’t even in the building anymore.

The reality of the UAE market is shifting toward flexibility. We see it in the rise of monthly short-term stays, the introduction of long-term golden visas, and the general professionalization of the real estate sector.

The “one cheque” wall is starting to crack, not because landlords have suddenly become more generous, but because the technology now exists to give them what they want without hurting the tenant.

When you can confirm eligibility in under 24 hours using only three documents-an Emirates ID, a salary certificate, and a bank statement-the old arguments for “cheque-based security” start to look like using a typewriter to send an email. It’s a nostalgic gesture that serves no practical purpose.

I think about those families I kept at the transit terminal. I think about the look on their faces when they realized the delay was entirely unnecessary. We are doing that to thousands of tenants every month.

We are keeping them in smaller apartments than they can afford, or in communities they don’t like, or in a state of constant financial anxiety, all because we are afraid to update a field in a database.

The unwritten policy is only powerful if we refuse to look at it. Once you drag it into the light, you realize it’s usually just a misunderstanding wrapped in a habit. The landlord doesn’t want your paper. They want the rent. And if we can provide the rent in a way that respects the tenant’s lifestyle, then the “one cheque” rule can finally be allowed to die.

Asking the Better Question

We need to stop asking “what is the policy?” and start asking “what is the goal?” If the goal is a secure, upfront payment for the landlord and a manageable, rewards-earning experience for the tenant, then the number of cheques is irrelevant.

It’s time to stop checking the fridge for food that isn’t there and start looking at the menu of modern financial solutions. The ghost of 2019 has had its fun; it’s time to let the living move into their new homes without the weight of an outdated habit dragging them down.