Saudi Arabia housing market 2026: prices, costs, FSBO

The freshest official reading is the General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) Real Estate Price Index for the first quarter of 2026, published on 20 April 2026. It puts the overall index at 103.3 against a 2023 base of 100, down 1.6% year on year, with the residential component down a steeper 3.6%. The decline is uneven by property type: apartments slipped only 1.1%, while villas fell 6.1% and residential land 3.9%. By region the spread is wide, with Riyadh down 4.4% and Makkah down 0.7%, but the Eastern Province up 6.9%.

The quarter-on-quarter picture is gentler than the annual one. The overall index was roughly flat versus Q4 2025, down about 0.2%, so the steep year-on-year fall reflects a market that softened over the past twelve months and is now closer to level. For context on where asking prices sit, our own read of published portal listings in late June 2026 across two-to-three-bedroom apartments in Riyadh and Jeddah put the median asking price at about SAR 865,000, with Riyadh near SAR 990,000 (around SAR 7,200 per square meter) and Jeddah near SAR 620,000 (around SAR 6,000 per square meter). Those are advertised asking prices in two major cities, so they sit above the national average transaction value, not a substitute for the official index.

The more important signal for a seller is volume, not price. Residential transactions in February 2026 totaled about SAR 14.7 billion, down roughly 56% from a year earlier, and the number of deals fell about 45% to around 18,300. Prices are holding up far better than activity, which means the market is slow, not collapsing.

The single largest line is the Real Estate Transaction Tax (RETT), a 5% levy on the sale value collected by ZATCA on the disposal. It replaced the old 5% VAT on property and is customarily borne by the seller unless the contract shifts it to the buyer. On a SAR 1,500,000 sale that is SAR 75,000, and it is owed whether or not you use an agent.

If you hire a listing broker, expect a commission of about 2% to 2.5% of the price, with 2.5% the common default, plus 15% VAT on that fee. On the same SAR 1.5M sale a 2.5% commission is SAR 37,500 plus SAR 5,625 of VAT, for SAR 43,125 in total agent cost. Crucially, the party that engaged the broker pays. A seller who hires a listing broker pays the seller side; where a buyer brings their own agent, the buyer pays that side. There is no automatic seller-pays-both convention as in the United States.

The remaining costs are small. Notarization and title transfer through a notary or the Najiz / Ministry of Justice e-platform carry only nominal authentication fees, and the deed transfer itself is generally free or minimal. There is no recurring annual property tax on an owner-occupied home. Added together, a seller who uses an agent pays roughly SAR 118,000, or about 7.9% of the price, while the avoidable part of that, the commission and its VAT, is roughly SAR 43,000.

Selling your own home directly is fully legal in Saudi Arabia, and brokers are not mandatory. Owner-direct deals are common within family, tribe, and neighborhood networks and through classifieds. The biggest saving from going private is the broker commission and the 15% VAT on it, since the 5% RETT is owed either way.

The market has been pushed strongly toward licensed, regulated intermediation, which raises the bar for purely informal selling. The Real Estate General Authority (REGA) now requires brokers to be licensed, transactions run through the Najiz / Ministry of Justice e-title system and the Ejar / REGA digital platforms, and advertised listings increasingly need a documented ownership and advertising authorization under the Fal license regime. A private seller can still advertise and transact, but the rules around who may publish a paid listing have tightened.

In practice, most sellers still list on a portal and many use a broker, partly because buyers expect platform listings and the e-government transfer steps are easiest to navigate with a licensed intermediary. The main local portals that take direct owner listings are Aqar (sa.aqar.fm) and Bayut Saudi Arabia (bayut.sa). Anyone.com is a third route for the advert itself, with no commission for an owner selling direct; the ownership and advertising documentation the Saudi rules call for is a separate question from where the advert sits. A confident private seller can replicate the essentials: price against real comparable sales rather than asking prices, prepare a clean title and any required authorization, agree written terms, and complete the transfer through Najiz. Doing so keeps the commission in your pocket while you still pay the RETT that any sale incurs.