Owning house remains a dream for most Saudis

Sixty percent of the nearly 20 million citizens of Saudi Arabia live in rented apartments, a leading property firm revealed recently.
This figure from Corporate Commercial Real Estate Services, the world’s largest property services firm, come as construction, property and land prices soar across the country, making rentals and house ownership increasingly unaffordable.
Rents have increased by 20 percent due to high prices of building material, according to experts.
Talal Samarqandi, chairman of the engineering offices committee at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), said: “I think the true percentage of vacant land in Saudi cities stands at 50 percent.”
Abdullah Al-Ahmari, a member of the real estate committee at the JCCI, said: “Some landlords have hiked their rents by about 20 percent. It is very difficult for people with low incomes to get apartments at reasonable rates,” he said.
Al-Ahmari claimed there are only 2,000 homes available in Jeddah, which makes it necessary to find more housing units to balance supply and demand. “This is quite insufficient to meet the growing demand for homes in the wake of a rapidly growing population and arrival of more people in the city,” he said.
Skyrocketing rents, which started five years ago, have created financial problems for many Saudi families which live in four-room flats. At the same time, many landlords have tried to only attract expatriates by building small flats consisting of two rooms that are not adequate for families. The annual rent for a small flat is in the region of SR35,000.
Many Saudis and expatriates complain of new apartment buildings providing small and expensive flats. Many landlords also raise rents unreasonably every year, and warn families that they either pay up or leave.
Real estate experts expect apartment construction for low-income families to stop because of this unstable situation, which has been made worse by fluctuating prices of building materials, rising wages in the construction industry and high land prices. Construction prices have increased from SR95 to SR130 per meter.
“Many expatriates who left their families at home are interested in renting small flats consisting of two rooms. However, others with wives and no children also prefer to live in small flats,” a landlord who has a new building in Jeddah told Arab News.
Housing Minister Shuwaish Al-Duwaihi recently signed agreements for the design of 82 housing projects, which would be put out to tender this year. Nine of these projects are in the Makkah region covering an area of 28.1 million square meters.
There are plans to build 18,000 housing units in Jeddah, 360 in Makkah and hundreds of units in Rabigh, Raniya, Taif, Khulais, Yanbu and Mahad, the minister said.