Riyadh rental yields: the cheapest districts pay the most

Riyadh apartments earned a median gross yield of 4.30% across 65 districts in the first nine months of 2025. The range is wide. Al Olaya sits at the bottom with 2.10%, Ishbiliyah at the top with 7.06%.

No Saudi authority publishes a yield. REGA, the real estate regulator, publishes rent per square metre in one file and sale price per square metre in another. We divide one by the other for each district. The sample is 290,472 rental contracts and 12,530 sale deeds, and every row shows its own counts.

The result mostly mirrors prices: the dearer the district, the lower the yield (correlation -0.73). This is also the last district ranking the open data allows. REGA removed the district column from its Riyadh sales file after Q3 2025.

Key figures at a glance

How we calculate these yields. One division, nothing modelled. We take REGA's average annual rent per sqm for apartments in a district and divide it by REGA's average sale price per sqm for the same district and quarter. Rents are weighted by contract count, prices by deed count, and pooled over Q1, Q2 and Q3 2025 where both exist. A district needs at least 200 rental contracts and 20 sale deeds to make the table.

Rental yield in Riyadh by district, ranked

Sixty-five districts have both an apartment rent and an apartment sale price for at least one quarter of 2025. Their median gross yield is 4.30%. Each row shows which quarters it covers and how many contracts and deeds sit behind it.

Those counts matter, because the two sides are very uneven. There are 290,472 rental contracts but only 12,530 sale deeds, roughly 23 to one. Ishbiliyah's 7.06% rests on rent from 6,499 contracts and a price from 56 deeds. Al Olaya's 2.10% rests on 9,339 contracts and 45 deeds. Some middle rows are thinner still: Al Dhubbat (4.74%) has 20 deeds, Irqah (3.37%) has 23.

Both sides come from REGA's quarterly rental indicators and sales transaction indicators for the Riyadh region, Q1 to Q3 2025, published under the KSA Open Data Licence. We took the files from a public mirror because REGA's portal does not respond to our servers, and checked five of them byte for byte. District names are REGA's English labels. REGA hides prices it considers too thin: in the 3,569 Riyadh residential sale rows for Q1 to Q3 2025, the smallest deed count with a published price is six. Our own floor of 200 contracts and 20 deeds then removes more districts.

Why Riyadh's most expensive districts yield the least

Across the 65 districts, the correlation between price per sqm and gross yield is -0.73 (-0.72 on log price). The cheapest quarter of districts, 16 of them at a median SAR 3,828/sqm, yields 4.87%. The dearest 16, at a median SAR 10,155/sqm, yield 3.54%. Almost all of that 133 basis point gap comes from price.

Look at the two columns side by side. Rent per sqm varies 2.9 times across the city, from West Al Uraija to Hittin. Price per sqm varies 6.1 times, from Al Hazm to Al Olaya. Al Olaya rents for 1.4 times Ishbiliyah but sells for 4.8 times, which explains most of the gap between them.

A high rank in this table mostly means a low price. It says little about rental demand, so buying the top of the list is really a bet on cheap Riyadh. For the difference between gross and net, see gross vs net rental yield. For land values at the same district level, see Riyadh land prices by district.

Why one city-wide yield misleads

At city level, the gross apartment yield rose from 4.37% in Q1 2025 to 4.82% in Q4 (REGA rental and sales indicators). Most of the rise came from falling prices rather than rising rents. There is no 2026 city yield yet, as no 2026 rental quarterly has been released.

Applied to a single building, the city figure can be badly wrong. Using the 4.30% median for an Al Olaya apartment, which yields 2.10%, more than doubles its gross income. For Ishbiliyah at 7.06%, it understates income by nearly 40%.

Treat the two ends with care. The published table spreads 3.4 times from top to bottom. If we rebuild prices as total value over total area instead, the median barely moves (4.28%) and the correlation is unchanged. But Ishbiliyah drops to 6.29% and Al Olaya rises to 2.22%, a spread of 2.8 times. The middle of the table is solid. The two ends rest on fewer than sixty deeds each, and depend on the method.

Coverage was already shrinking before the district column disappeared. REGA published an apartment rent for 187 Riyadh districts in Q1 2025 but a usable price for only 73, and by Q3 that had fallen to 48 (REGA rental and sales). Falling sales explain it: Riyadh city residential deeds fell 65% between Q1 and Q4 2025 (REGA).

What the rent freeze means for yields

On 25 September 2025, Riyadh froze annual increases on residential and commercial rents, for existing and new leases, for five years inside the city's urban boundary (REGA). A vacant unit that was leased before must be re-let at the rent of its last Ejar contract. Only property never leased can set a new rent.

The cap stays with the unit, so a new tenant does not reset the rent. For five years, Riyadh yields can only move through prices. GASTAT's price index for the Riyadh region was 4.2% higher in Q2 2026 than a year earlier (GASTAT, via the DataSaudi REPI cube). The index covers the whole region and all property types, land and commercial included, so we read it only as a direction. With rents frozen, rising prices mean falling yields. Many Riyadh models still assume rent growth that the law no longer allows.

In the first quarter of the freeze, rents actually fell. The average Riyadh apartment rent dropped 3.0% between Q3 and Q4 2025, and rent per sqm 2.1%, on the year's highest contract count of 185,107 (REGA). A change in the mix of units may explain part of that. Enforcement has been light: 268 complaints in three weeks, 18 landlords found in breach and 11 brokers referred (REGA, 16 October 2025). That is the only tally we found.

Lease registrations jumped nationally in February 2026, which REGA links to the new rules, and March 2026 was almost level with March 2025 (bulletin, March 2026). For rents alone, see average rent in Riyadh. For the wider market, see the Riyadh residential market.

A common mistake that knocks 82 basis points off the yield

If you divide REGA's average annual rent by its average sale price per unit, rather than per square metre, the median yield drops from 4.30% to 3.48%. That gap is not real: leased apartments are smaller than sold ones, and small units rent for more per sqm (REGA, Q1 2025).

What REGA does not publish

No Saudi authority publishes a rental yield, a residential vacancy rate, service charges, or the number of rented units by Riyadh district. REGA does not even publish a data dictionary for these files. We worked out from the numbers themselves that its rent column is annual. Two of these gaps can be bounded, and the bounds below are ours.

Omran estimate: the most a net Riyadh yield can be. No public source we can use gives Riyadh service charges, owners' association fees, management fees, insurance, vacancy or Ejar fees, so we publish no net yield. But costs cannot be negative, so the net median cannot be above the gross median of 4.30% (Q1 to Q3 2025). Already, 47 of the 65 districts (72%) sit below SAMA's June 2026 interbank rate (SAIBOR) of 4.74%, before any costs (SAMA, via the DataSaudi rates cube). Against the 4.25% repo rate, the median has almost no room gross, and none net. Our view: the median Riyadh apartment does not cover the cost of money from rent alone.

Omran estimate: the rental stock is larger than the official count. GASTAT counts 345,002 rented homes in the Riyadh region in 2024 (GASTAT tenure series, via the DataSaudi cube). That count covers Saudi households only, and the 2022 census shows most households in the region were not Saudi. No public series counts the rest, which is why this table ranks districts by price rather than by rental demand.

Wafi off-plan prices are not public by district, so the table covers only resales of completed homes. New launches are not in it.

Ask for the 65-district table with counts, quarters and both price methods, or book a briefing on your own assets. The same method across other Saudi cities is in rental yields in Saudi Arabia.

FAQ

What is the average rental yield in Riyadh? The median Riyadh district yields 4.30% gross on apartments (mean 4.34%), across 65 districts, Q1 to Q3 2025. At city level, the yield rose from 4.37% in Q1 2025 to 4.82% in Q4 2025. No authority publishes a yield, so these are our calculations on REGA data.

Which Riyadh districts yield the most? Ishbiliyah at 7.06% and Al Qirawan at 6.69%, Q1 to Q3 2025. Check the price first. Ishbiliyah apartments sell at SAR 3,977/sqm against SAR 19,187 in Al Olaya, while rents are SAR 281 against SAR 403. The high yield mostly reflects a low price, and Ishbiliyah's price rests on 56 deeds.

Can I use one Riyadh yield figure for a valuation? No. Yields run from 2.10% to 7.06% on REGA's price per sqm, or 2.22% to 6.29% on the value-over-area method. That is a spread of 2.8 to 3.4 times. Using the 4.30% median for an Al Olaya asset more than doubles its gross income.

Does the rent freeze fix Riyadh yields? No. With rents capped for five years from 25 September 2025, yields now move only with prices, and prices are still rising.

Is this a gross or a net yield? Gross. There is no public data on Riyadh running costs, so we publish no net figure. Net can only be lower.

Why is there no district yield for recent quarters? REGA dropped the district column from its Riyadh sales file after Q3 2025. Since then the city appears as one row per property type (REGA).

Sources

• REGA, quarterly rental indicators, Riyadh region Q1 to Q3 2025 (rent leg and contract counts): link
• REGA, quarterly rental indicators Q4 2025 (first full quarter under the rent freeze): link
• REGA, sales transaction indicators, Riyadh Q3 2025 (price leg, deed counts, suppression floor): link
• REGA, sales transaction indicators, Riyadh Q4 2025 (city-level deed counts after the district column was withdrawn): link
• REGA, sales transaction indicators, Riyadh Q1 2026 (city-level price after the district column was withdrawn): link
• REGA, landlord and tenant provisions, five-year Riyadh rent freeze, 25 September 2025: link
• REGA, rental violations enforcement tally, 16 October 2025: link
• REGA, monthly bulletin March 2026 (lease contract registrations, average traded areas): link
• Ministry of Justice, deal-level sales records, Riyadh Q4 2025 (independent deal count): link
• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index, Riyadh region to Q2 2026, via the DataSaudi cube: link
• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q1 2026 release (GASTAT's own release stops at Q1 2026; the Q2 2026 figure comes from the DataSaudi cube): link
• GASTAT, housing tenure series, Riyadh region, via the DataSaudi cube: link
• GASTAT, 2022 census, Riyadh region households and population, via DataSaudi: link
• SAMA, policy rate and SAIBOR to June 2026, via the DataSaudi cube: link