Nadia Haddad, Middle East research editor

A Gulf property rule can be two years old and already wrong. Saudi Arabia's foreign-ownership framework took effect in January 2026. Qatar's freehold and usufruct areas were drawn recently enough that plenty of published advice predates them. Nadia edits the region's guides on the assumption that anything undated is unreliable, and the first thing she checks is not the rule but when the authority last stated it.

Two questions decide a sale here, and general guides tend to skip both. The first is whether a foreign buyer may own at that address at all, because eligibility runs by designated zone rather than by country. The second is which government counter registers the transfer, since the region mostly does this through a land department or registration authority rather than through a notary in private practice. Dubai routes it through the Land Department and its trustee offices. Turkey handles it at the Tapu Mudurlugu.

Nadia keeps the sequence intact too. A developer’s no-objection certificate, service-charge clearance, and the registration appointment come in an order that a seller cannot improvise, and a guide that lists them as a loose set of tasks is not much use to someone standing in the queue.

Where a framework is new or still being rolled out, she says so on the page and gives the date, rather than presenting a rule in force as settled practice. In this region that distinction is often the whole answer.

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