Rental Yield in Riyadh by District: 2.10% to 7.06%

Rental yield in Riyadh by district runs from 2.10% in Al Olaya to 7.06% in Ishbiliyah, a median of 4.30% gross across the 65 districts that clear a sample floor, pooled over Q1 to Q3 2025. No Saudi authority publishes a yield at all. REGA publishes an average annual rent per square metre in one file and an average sale price per square metre in another; this page divides the two, district by district, on 290,472 rental contracts and 12,530 sale deeds, both counts printed in every row. What comes out is the price ranking read backwards, correlation -0.73, and it is the last such ranking obtainable from the open-data release: REGA dropped the district column from its Riyadh sales file after Q3 2025.

Key figures at a glance

Omran estimate: how every yield on this page is built. One division, no modelling and no imputation. The numerator is REGA's published average annual rent per sqm for a district, apartments, residential use; the denominator is REGA's published average sale price per sqm for the same district, type and quarter. Rent legs are weighted by REGA's contract count, price legs by its deed count, pooled across Q1, Q2 and Q3 2025 and only over quarters where both legs exist. A district enters the table at 200 rental contracts and 20 sale deeds or better. The table stops exactly where REGA's own cells stop.

Rental yield in Riyadh by district, ranked

Sixty-five districts carry both a published apartment rent and a published apartment sale price for at least one quarter of 2025, and their median gross yield is 4.30%. Every row shows the quarters it pools and the sample on each leg, because the legs are nowhere near equally deep.

How unequally, in one comparison: 290,472 rental contracts against 12,530 sale deeds, roughly 23 to one. Ishbiliyah's 7.06% divides a rent from 6,499 contracts by a price from 56 deeds, Al Olaya's 2.10% divides 9,339 contracts by 45. Every Riyadh yield here is thick rent over thin price. Nor are the two extremes the thinnest legs on the page: Al Dhubbat's 4.74% rests on 20 deeds, Irqah's 3.37% on 23.

Both legs are REGA's quarterly rental indicators and sales transaction indicators, Riyadh region, Q1 to Q3 2025, released under the KSA Open Data Licence. REGA's own portal does not answer our infrastructure, so the files came from a public mirror, five checked byte for byte; English names are REGA's labels. Two filters removed the districts that are not here, and only one of them is ours. REGA withholds a price it judges too thin before anyone downstream sees it: across the 3,569 Riyadh residential sale rows of Q1 to Q3 2025 the smallest deed count carrying a published price is exactly six, and only four rows carry six or more deeds and no price at all. Our own floor, 200 rental contracts and 20 sale deeds, then cuts again well above REGA's.

Why the dearest districts in Riyadh yield the least

Across the 65 districts the correlation between price per square metre and gross yield is -0.73, and -0.72 on log price, pooled Q1 to Q3 2025. The cheapest price quartile, 16 districts at a median SAR 3,828/sqm, yields 4.87%. The dearest 16, median SAR 10,155/sqm, yield 3.54%. The 133 basis points between them are the denominator moving, not the income.

The mechanism sits in the two columns side by side. Rent per sqm spans 2.9 times, SAR 169 in West Al Uraija to SAR 492 in Hittin. Price per sqm spans 6.1 times, SAR 3,130 in Al Hazm to SAR 19,187 in Al Olaya. Al Olaya rents at 1.4 times Ishbiliyah and sells at 4.8 times it, and that ratio of ratios is the whole distance between 2.10% and 7.06%. Riyadh tenants pay a premium for a better address. Buyers pay a multiple.

So the yield column is a price column inverted, and a district's rank here says almost nothing about its rental demand. Buying the top of this table is buying the bottom of the price table: a bet on the cheap end of Riyadh wearing an income label. That sits one step before the more familiar confusion between a gross and a net yield, and one step after the land market that sets the denominator, ranked at the same grain in Riyadh land prices by district.

What a single Riyadh yield does to an underwriting

The same two files put the city-level gross apartment yield at 4.37% in Q1 2025, 4.12% in Q2, 4.66% in Q3 and 4.82% in Q4 2025 (REGA rental and sales indicators). The price leg did most of that 45 basis point rise: SAR 6,090/sqm down to SAR 5,729/sqm, against rent per sqm up from SAR 266.1 to SAR 276.0. There is no 2026 city yield, because no 2026 rental quarterly has been released.

Apply that city figure to a single asset and the error stops being a rounding matter. Al Olaya yields 2.10%, so the 4.30% median overstates an Al Olaya apartment's gross income by more than double; against Ishbiliyah's 7.06% it understates by nearly 40% in the other direction.

One caution on the extremes, which we would rather print than have a reader discover. Top to bottom the published table spreads 3.4 times. Rebuilt on total value over total area, the other price estimator these files support, the median barely moves (4.28%) and the correlation not at all, but Ishbiliyah becomes 6.29% and Al Olaya 2.22%, a spread of 2.8 times. The centre is estimator-independent. The tails are not, and both rest on fewer than sixty deeds.

Coverage thinned before the district column vanished: REGA published an apartment rent for 187 Riyadh districts in Q1 2025 against a usable price for 73, then 187 against 60 in Q2, 185 against 48 in Q3 (REGA rental and sales). Sale volume is why. Riyadh city residential deeds fell 65% between Q1 and Q4 2025, 31,699 to 11,119 (REGA), and Ministry of Justice deal records fall 70% over the same two points, 14,600 to 4,367 (MOJ). Those two endpoints are the only place the two series agree. Quarter by quarter they diverge, once to within 2% of each other and once in opposite directions, so this is the only comparison we ever put them in together.

Which leg can still move, after the rent freeze

On 25 September 2025, by Council of Ministers approval and Royal Decree, Riyadh suspended annual increases in the total rental value of residential and commercial leases, existing and new, for five years inside the city's urban boundaries (REGA). The provision under the headline is the one that governs a yield: a previously leased vacant unit must be re-let at the total rental value of the last executed Ejar contract. Only never-leased property may set its own price.

The cap follows the unit, not the tenancy. Turnover does not reset a Riyadh rent, so the rent leg of any Riyadh yield struck from here is administratively pinned for five years, and the quotient can move only through the denominator. Hold that against the price side. GASTAT's index for the Riyadh region stands at 115.98 in Q2 2026, up 4.2% year on year and 5.6% on the quarter, after 109.83 in Q1 2026 (GASTAT, via the DataSaudi REPI cube; the authority's own release document stops at Q1 2026, so the cube is the route that returned this quarter). That index covers the whole region and every asset class in it, land and commercial included, so we read it as a direction and never as a substitute for the apartment denominator above. The direction is the part that matters. Under a freeze a price recovery is a yield cut, and most Riyadh underwriting has it the other way up, modelling rent growth into a market where rent growth has been legislated out and prices have not.

The first quarter under the cap moved rent the other way: average Riyadh apartment rent fell 3.0% between Q3 and Q4 2025 and rent per sqm 2.1%, on the largest contract count of the year at 185,107, so composition may carry part of it (REGA). Enforcement is small so far: 268 complaints in three weeks, 18 landlords in breach, 11 brokers referred (REGA, 16 October 2025). That is the only tally we could retrieve, not necessarily the only one published.

Registration moved, though not by as much as one pair of numbers suggests. February 2026 recorded 266,273 residential lease contracts nationally, a spike REGA attributes to documentation driven by the new provisions; by March 2026 the count was back to 181,951, against 180,831 in March 2025 (bulletin, March 2026). March on March, that is one per cent. The provisions bought a month of catch-up documentation, not a step change in how much of the market Ejar sees. The rent leg alone is at average rent in Riyadh, the whole city in the Riyadh residential market.

The misreading that costs 82 basis points

Divide REGA's average annual rent by its average transacted price, instead of comparing the two per square metre, and the median Riyadh apartment yield falls from 4.30% to 3.48% on exactly the same districts and quarters. Those 82 basis points are not a market fact. They are an area mismatch, and it is the most expensive way to read these files wrongly.

The implied leased apartment runs 113 to 114 sqm in every quarter of Q1 to Q3 2025; the mean sold apartment runs 141 to 144 sqm. Rent per sqm rises as units shrink, which is why studios rent at SAR 521.9/sqm a year against apartments at SAR 266.1 and floors at SAR 192.0 in the same city and quarter (REGA, Q1 2025). A unit-level yield quietly compares a small rented flat with a larger sold one. Villas fail the same test so badly that we publish no villa yield in any form: REGA measures villa rent on leased built-up area and villa price on the transacted plot, and its own bulletin puts the average traded villa area at 423 sqm in March 2026, which is a plot, not a dwelling.

A third trap sits in the file rather than in the reading of it. REGA's sales files carry up to three rows for the same district, type, use and quarter, and the split is not stable: 943 of 1,301 keys in Q1 2025, 794 of 1,177 in Q2, but only 9 of 668 in Q3. A loader keyed on the label keeps the last row and prices Al Olaya at SAR 19,450.67/sqm in Q1 2025 instead of the deed-weighted SAR 18,413.79. It mangles Q1 and Q2, spares Q3, and prints a tidy price fall between quarters that is a parsing artefact dressed as a market move.

What REGA does not publish, and what we put there instead

No Saudi authority publishes a rental yield, a residential vacancy rate, a service charge, or a count of rented units per Riyadh district. REGA publishes no field dictionary for these quarterlies either, so even the fact that its rent column is annual rather than monthly was settled by arithmetic on the files. Two of those gaps can be bounded honestly, and both bounds are ours, not the publisher's.

Omran estimate: the ceiling on a net Riyadh yield. No permitted public source publishes Riyadh service charges, owners-association fees, management fees, insurance, vacancy allowance or Ejar fees at any geography, so we publish no net yield. We can publish a ceiling on one. Costs cannot be negative, so a net district median cannot exceed the gross median of 4.30% (pooled Q1 to Q3 2025), and 47 of the 65 districts, 72% of the table, already sit below SAMA's June 2026 SAIBOR average of 4.74% before a single cost of ownership (SAMA, via the DataSaudi rates cube). The two sides of that comparison are a year apart, and the like-for-like version is worse rather than better: SAIBOR averaged 5.36% to 5.48% through Q1 to Q3 2025, further above the yield than the June 2026 print. Stated as our judgement: the median Riyadh apartment does not clear the cost of money on rental income alone, and against the 4.25% repo rate it holds five basis points of headroom gross and none net. Riyadh residential is priced for capital growth, and the rent freeze has removed the mechanism by which income could catch up.

Omran estimate: a floor under the rental stock, not a total. GASTAT's tenure series counts 345,002 rented housing units in the Riyadh region in 2024, 32.8% of the units occupied by Saudi households, down from 43.3% in 2017 (GASTAT tenure series, via the DataSaudi cube). That series covers Saudi households only, and the 2022 census counts 2,273,197 households in the region of which 996,166, or 43.8%, are Saudi (GASTAT via DataSaudi). So 345,002 is a floor under the region's rented stock and nothing more: the majority of Riyadh tenants sit outside that denominator and no public series counts them. It follows that no yield above can be weighted by the rental stock its district actually holds, which is why this table ranks districts by price and not by rental demand.

One further limit on scope: Wafi off-plan project prices are not public by district, so every row is registered secondary and completed stock, with new launches outside it.

Every cell above is REGA's own. Every division is ours, printed next to the count it rests on and the quarters it pools. Ask for the 65-district table with its counts, quarters and both estimators, or scope a briefing against your own asset list. The same arithmetic, run across every Saudi city whose two legs survive the same floor, sits at rental yields in Saudi Arabia.

FAQ

What is the average rental yield in Riyadh? The median Riyadh district yields 4.30% gross on apartments, pooled Q1 to Q3 2025 across the 65 districts that clear the sample floor, mean 4.34%. At city level the same REGA files give 4.37% in Q1 2025 rising to 4.82% in Q4 2025. No Saudi authority publishes a yield, so each of those figures is our arithmetic on two published REGA cells.

Which Riyadh districts yield the most? Ishbiliyah at 7.06% and Al Qirawan at 6.69%, pooled Q1 to Q3 2025. Read the price column before acting on it: Ishbiliyah apartments sell at SAR 3,977/sqm against Al Olaya's SAR 19,187, while rent per sqm is SAR 281 against SAR 403. The high yield is a low price, not strong rent, and Ishbiliyah's price leg rests on 56 deeds.

Is a single Riyadh yield figure safe to underwrite with? No. The spread runs 2.10% to 7.06% on REGA's published price per sqm and 2.22% to 6.29% on the value-over-area estimator, so 2.8 to 3.4 times top to bottom depending on the price leg. Applying the 4.30% median to an Al Olaya asset overstates its gross income by more than double.

Does the rent freeze mean Riyadh yields are now fixed? The opposite. With rent capped for five years from 25 September 2025 inside the urban boundary, and a previously leased vacant unit required to re-let at the last Ejar contract value, the yield moves only through price. GASTAT's regional index, all asset classes rather than apartments alone, rose 4.2% year on year in Q2 2026 to 115.98. Whichever way price goes from here, the rent leg cannot answer it.

Is this a gross or a net yield? Gross. No permitted public source publishes Riyadh service charges, management fees, vacancy allowance or insurance at any geography, so a net figure would be an assumption wearing a data label. The direction is certain: net sits below 4.30%, and 47 of the 65 districts are already under the June 2026 interbank rate of 4.74% gross.

Why is there no district yield for the most recent quarter? REGA dropped the district column from its Riyadh sales file after Q3 2025. In the Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 files Riyadh city is five rows, one per property type, inside a regional file of 62 and 73 rows; the Q1 2026 apartment row prices the city at SAR 5,861.71/sqm on 3,133 transactions (REGA). Coverage was already thinning: an apartment rent was published for 187 districts in Q1 2025 against a usable price for 73, falling to 48 by Q3 2025.

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 (the latest release document): 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