Riyadh land prices by district, and which ones you can trust

Residential land in Al Malqa traded at SAR 8,990/sqm in Q2 2026, but only on 20 deals. Al Khayr, at SAR 1,310, had 505. The whole city averaged SAR 3,163/sqm on 3,769 transactions (REGA).

One warning first. REGA publishes the same quarter in two places, and they disagree. The free download is the weaker of the two.

Key figures at a glance

Riyadh land prices per square metre, district by district

REGA's Real Estate Indicators platform is the regulator's public dashboard, built on Ministry of Justice deeds. For Q2 2026 it prices residential land in nineteen Riyadh districts. Ten more districts traded but got no price.

Source: REGA Real Estate Indicators, twenty-nine districts queried one at a time. We sort by deal count, not price, because the count tells you whether the price is usable. The ten that traded without a price: Al Faruq (16 deals), Ad Dar Al Baida (13), Ash Shifa (7), Hittin and Qurtubah (4 each), Al Nada, Al Yasmin and Umm Al Hamam West (3 each), Ar Rawdah and Al Olaya (1 each).

The districts people ask about barely trade. Al Malqa had twenty land deals in the quarter, Hittin four, Al Olaya one. The volume is further out, in Al Khayr and Urayd.

Thin districts swing hard. Al Malqa printed SAR 6,512 in Q3 2025 on 142 deals, then SAR 11,267 in Q4 2025 on 29. In Q1 2026 it had 14 deals and no price at all. Al Arid, with 89 to 124 deals a quarter, has held between SAR 4,351 and SAR 4,808 (REGA REI, Q3 2025 to Q2 2026). A district needs steady volume before its price is worth quoting.

The platform offers 192 Riyadh districts (REGA), but shows three at a time and no link opens a given one. Nobody publishes the full set as a file. The table above is REGA's own figures, collected by hand, not our estimate (how the platform works).

The same quarter, published twice, at two different prices

For Q3 2025, REGA's downloadable file shows 3,495 Riyadh residential-land deeds worth SAR 3.56bn. Its platform shows 5,606 transactions for the same city, quarter and property type. Where both price a district, they differ by 3% to 20%.

Sources: REGA open data, Riyadh Q3 2025 sales transaction indicators, KSA Open Data Licence, and REGA Real Estate Indicators.

In four quarters the two agree exactly. Q1 2025, for instance, shows 15,583 transactions in both. Q3 2025 does not match, and neither does any quarter of 2024.

The gaps fall mostly on thin, expensive northern districts, which are the ones a valuer is most likely to quote. Hittin's SAR 12,237 in the file rests on six deeds. The platform counts seventeen deals there and prints nothing. When REGA withholds a price on its own platform, we trust the withholding over the file.

The file is also messier. In Q1 2025, 728 of 975 combinations of district and property type appear on more than one row. Al Janadriyah that quarter is split across three rows at three different prices, where the platform shows a single figure (REGA open data, REGA REI).

Hiding thin districts costs less than it looks. REGA excludes "neighborhoods and cities with fewer than 6 transactions" (REGA). In Q3 2025 the 60 priced districts, out of 139 with a land deed, still held 94% of deeds and 88% of value traded (REGA). The floor of six is applied after outliers are removed, so Ar Rawdah and Ar Risalah each had twelve Q3 2025 deals and still no price.

What REGA's average price per square metre measures

REGA averages the price per square metre of each deal, after trimming outliers. Its methodology page, updated 25 June 2026, says so (REGA). It is not total value divided by total area. About 45% of raw deed records are dropped before publication, from 3,847,193 transactions going back to 2006.

In the Q3 2025 file, Al Arid publishes SAR 6,095/sqm on 32 deeds. Divide the row's total value by its total area and you get SAR 829/sqm (REGA). Al Malqa goes the other way, 6,847 published against 7,589. In 22 of the 76 priced land rows, value per area falls outside the row's own low to high range.

Omran estimate. The gap tells you plot size. Al Arid's 32 deeds average about 8,520 sqm each, Al Malqa's 63 about 675 sqm (REGA). An average of deals describes a typical deal. In a district selling large parcels, it overstates what a large site is worth per metre. Use the Al Arid average on a hectare-scale plot and the land value in a residual can be out by a multiple (see residual land value). No one publishes prices by plot size, so this is the best proxy we have.

Prices, volumes and the SAR 1,500 cap

GASTAT's price index for the Riyadh region rose 4.2% year on year in Q2 2026, after a fall in Q1 (GASTAT). Land carries 70.6% of the national index, so Saudi price headlines are mostly about plots (see the regional prints).

Volume moved more than price. Riyadh city land deals went from 5,606 in Q3 2025 to 3,280 in Q1 2026, then 3,769 in Q2 2026. The city price held between SAR 3,116 and SAR 3,224 (REGA REI).

On 29 March 2025 the Crown Prince lifted the freeze on sales, subdivision and permits over two more tracts north of Riyadh, next to Al Arid and Al Qairawan. With land released earlier, 81.48 km² is back on the market. The same order calls for 10,000 to 40,000 serviced plots a year for five years at no more than SAR 1,500 per sqm, for eligible first-time citizen buyers (SPA).

Seven of the nineteen priced districts already trade below SAR 1,500, so the cap changes nothing there. It matters in the release zones, next to districts at SAR 4,526 and SAR 6,838. How many plots have been allocated is not published.

Holding land empty now costs money. The white land fee gazetted on 22 August 2025 charges 2.5% to 10% of assessed value a year, depending on zone, once an owner holds 5,000 sqm in a city (Umm Al-Qura). Riyadh billing started on 1 January 2026 (MOMAH, and see the fee in detail). Rents inside the city are also frozen for five years from 25 September 2025 (SPA). Both push owners to build or sell.

Where the deed record runs out

Our table covers nineteen of 192 Riyadh districts. Several things that matter in a land deal are not published anywhere:

REGA gives a mean and a low to high range, but never a median, and it does not split prices by plot size even though Al Arid shows size moves the price per metre. Serviced and raw land are lumped together, the city's stock of developable land is not counted, and allocations under the SAR 1,500 programme are not reported, so that stays n/a.

District rents are the other gap. REGA's rental platform did not respond to us, so yields are covered in Riyadh rental yield by district. Deal-level deeds sit behind a Nafath login.

Omran estimate. The housing ministry counts 2.3 million sqm of serviced but empty land in An Narjis and more than 1.6 million sqm in Al Arid, enough for more than 13,500 homes (MOMAH, 8 Jun 2026). At REGA's Q2 2026 prices, the two together are worth about SAR 21 billion. The yearly fee would run SAR 525 million to SAR 2.1 billion, depending on which zone each district falls in, which MOMAH has not said. The figure is probably high, because large parcels trade below the district average.

We build these tables from the primary record, with the deal count on every figure. Ask for the full 192-district table, or scope a briefing on your own sites.

FAQ

Where does the newest official Riyadh district land price come from? From REGA's Real Estate Indicators platform, which runs to Q2 2026 at district level for five cities. What stopped is the download: REGA removed the neighbourhood column from its quarterly sales-indicator files from Q4 2025, so the free files now stop at city level.

Sources

• REGA Real Estate Indicators, Riyadh city page (district land prices and transaction counts to Q2 2026): link
• REGA Real Estate Indicators, cities and definitions (five-city district grain, the disclaimer on what the number is): link
• REGA, Data Refinement and Verification Mechanism (six-transaction floor, IQR trim, 45% of records excluded): link
• REGA open data, quarterly Riyadh sales transaction indicators built on Ministry of Justice and Real Estate Register deeds, Q1 2024 to Q1 2026, KSA Open Data Licence: link
• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q2 2026 (Riyadh region 115.98, residential land 107.65, item weights): link
• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q1 2026 bulletin (Riyadh region down 4.4%, residential land down 3.9%): link
• Saudi Press Agency, Riyadh directives of 29 March 2025 (81.48 km² released, SAR 1,500/sqm plot cap): link
• Saudi Press Agency, Riyadh rent freeze from 25 September 2025: link
• Umm Al-Qura official gazette, white land fees executive regulation of 22 August 2025 (tiers, 5,000 sqm threshold): link
• Ministry of Municipalities and Housing, Riyadh white land zones and 1 January 2026 invoicing: link
• Ministry of Municipalities and Housing, idle land in Al Narjis and Al Arid (2.3M sqm and 1.6M sqm): link