There were nearly 22,000 transactions in Saudi Arabia’s residential property market during April this year at a total value of 11.65 billion Saudi riyals ($3 billion), data from property consultants, Knight Frank showed.

However, while the number of transactions was slightly lower than the 23,809 deals for the same period in pre-COVID 2019, it far exceeded the 5,997 deals that took place in the same month last year.

In terms of value, however, the total for April this year was higher than the 11.18 billion riyals for the same month in 2019.

The total value of mortgages issued in Saudi Arabia from January to April was 60 million riyals compared to the 80 million riyals for full-year 2019 and 140 billion riyals for full-year 2020.

Knight Frank noted that a number of key policy initiatives are underpinning the resilience of residential sales activity.

Saudi Arabia has set a goal of reaching 70 percent home ownership by 2030. In 2017, the Ministry of Housing and the Real Estate Development Fund launched Sakani to help facilitate that aim through a program of house building, plot allocation and financing support.

At 115,000 transactions, sales volumes between January and May are on par with the same period in 2019 and are in fact 49 percent higher than January to May 2018, the report said.

Knight Frank said that 1.1 million families have benefitted from the Sakani program since its launch five years ago.

(Writing by Brinda Darasha; editing by Seban Scaria)

brinda.darasha@refinitiv.com

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