Saudi Arabia · Residency by investment
Premium Residency — Real Estate Owner
Introduced 17 January 2024. Residency lasts as long as the qualifying property is held. Materially reshaped by the Law of Real Estate Ownership by Non-Saudis, gazetted 25 July 2025 and in force 21–22 January 2026, whose Executive Regulation and designated zones were approved by Cabinet on 23 June 2026 — three weeks ago.
This is the route most transformed by the January 2026 property law, which for the first time lets foreigners own residential property in most Saudi cities. But the designated-zone regime is only weeks old, and buying SAR 4m of Saudi residential property today means underwriting an untested legal framework in an illiquid market.
Qualifying routes
Minimum SAR 4m (roughly USD 1.07m) in residential property, which must be mortgage-free and independently valued by a Taqeem-accredited valuer. Residency is tied to continued ownership.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- 4M SAR
- Total landed cost
- SAR 4m property plus a transfer fee of up to 5% for non-Saudi buyers on top of the standard 5% Real Estate Transaction Tax — budget roughly 10% in total transaction taxes and fees, plus SAR 4,000 application fee
- Timeline
- 2–4 months — 8–14 weeks including title and valuation verification
- Physical presence
- None published
- Family
- spousechildrenparents
- Permanent residency
- No — status persists only while the property is held
- Citizenship
- Effectively none
- Language test
- Not applicable
- Dual citizenship
- Not permitted — you would have to renounce
- Requirements
- residential property of at least SAR 4mproperty must be free of mortgageTaqeem-accredited independent valuationregistration in the national Real Estate Registryclean criminal recordmedical report
- The qualifying property must be mortgage-free — you cannot leverage the asset that buys your residency. This is a real capital-efficiency cost versus the UAE, which permits mortgages.
- Roughly 10% in combined transaction taxes on entry (up to 5% non-Saudi transfer fee plus 5% RETT). That is double the UAE's 4% and it is dead money.
- The designated-zone regime was approved by Cabinet on 23 June 2026 and is effectively untested. Per-zone ownership percentage caps and usufruct limits are still bedding in and were not published in retrievable form at the time of writing.
- Makkah and Madinah remain restricted, with narrow exceptions; Muslim expatriate residents may purchase within designated zones subject to conditions. The Premium Residency Law separately allows usufruct of up to 99 years there (Article 2(e)).
- Residency dies with the asset. Sell, or let value drop below SAR 4m at review, and the status goes.
- Saudi residential property is far less liquid than Dubai's, with a thin foreign bid. Exit is the risk, not entry.
- Compare honestly against the SAR 800,000 permanent tier: that costs one fifth as much, is permanent rather than ownership-contingent, and requires no property at all.