INSIDERrealestate — HomeRates are indicative. Contracts and DLD fees are always in dirhams.
The Gulf’s largest market is opening to foreign buyers — zone by zone, under new rules.
For a long time Saudi Arabia was effectively closed to foreign buyers: property could be bought only with a residence permit and for one’s own occupation. Vision 2030 is rewriting that model. A law on real estate ownership by non-Saudis, approved by the cabinet in the summer of 2025, took effect in 2026: foreigners may own property within geographic zones set by the Real Estate General Authority — Riyadh and Jeddah first. Makkah and Madinah remain under special restrictions.
Residency runs on a separate track. Since 2024 the Premium Residency has had a property-owner category, granted for a completed home worth at least SAR 4 million. It is a status tied to the property, not a work visa, and it carries its own conditions.
The other pole of the market is the giga-projects on the Red Sea coast built by companies of the Public Investment Fund: The Red Sea, AMAALA, NEOM. These are gated resort masterplans with their own islands, marinas and global hotel brands. Buying there is not a flat in a city but a share in a pre-designed way of life.
We hold no transaction data of our own for Saudi Arabia and will not invent any. What is here is the ownership rules and market structure; figures live in the write-ups of specific projects, where they carry a date and a source.
The caveat: The rules for foreigners have only just been rewritten and there is no resale market on the resort islands yet — the exit is still a future question.
What we filmed on location — projects, rules and the things a brochure leaves out.
0:24 A branded tower landing in Jeddah. Twenty-four seconds on what it signals about the Saudi market opening to foreign buyers.
WatchPortfolio core
UAE satellite
The Gulf, but not Dubai
Coastal living and relocation
Fast entry and status
Status inside the EU
Living and letting, not status
Europe close by, a soft entry
An operating business
Resort letting and wintering
Cheap entry
Capital preservation
Jurisdiction and residency
Jurisdiction and education
Long horizon
Foreign ownership inside zones set by the regulator. The title is a property of the specific project, not of the country as a whole: what the contract says outranks the word "freehold" in a brochure, and that is the first document to read. The detail is in the write-up above.
Early entry, long horizon. The Gulf’s largest market is opening to foreign buyers — zone by zone, under new rules. That answers "what job does this market do", which is a different question from "where is the yield highest": markets on this list run on different currencies, different liquidity and different exit horizons, and a single percentage cannot be compared across them.
The rules for foreigners have only just been rewritten and there is no resale market on the resort islands yet — the exit is still a future question. We put that in writing rather than in the small print, because it is usually the thing that decides whether the market suits a particular buyer at all.
Because we hold no transaction database for this market, and passing a third-party market summary off as our own analysis is not something we do. We compute figures only where we hold live stock — in Dubai, where medians and entry prices are recalculated nightly and published on the district pages. Here you get the rules, the role of the market and what we have seen for ourselves.
Tell me the budget, the horizon and what the purchase is for. Where the answer is Dubai I will say so with numbers from our own stock; where it is not, I will say that too.
Saudi Arabia real estate is going global: Laheq Island, a 400-hectare private island on the Red Sea, offers villas from SAR 17.6 million and apartments from SAR 5.9 million. Who is building it, what the masterplan includes and whether buying property in Saudi Arabia makes sense yet.
Every Gulf state now has a property-linked residence of some kind. They differ in what they cost, what they permit and how deep the market behind them is.
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