Mortgage in Saudi Arabia: What SAMA's Tables Show (2025-2026)

Saudi banks wrote SAR 80.4 billion of new residential mortgages in 2025, down 12% year on year, across 108,800 contracts, and villas took 64% of the money (SAMA data via Argaam, 3 Feb 2026). The monthly series is worse than the annual one: banks originated SAR 4.47 billion in November 2025, less than half the SAR 10.06 billion of November 2024, even though the policy rate was cut by 175 basis points between mid-2024 and December 2025 (SAMA Monthly Statistical Bulletin, Nov 2025). Anyone pricing a mortgage in Saudi Arabia should read two SAMA tables a month before anything else. This page reads them, with a source and a date on every figure.

Key figures at a glance

A market barely half its 2021 size

New bank mortgage lending peaked at SAR 152.5 billion across 201,481 contracts in 2021, troughed at SAR 77.7 billion in 2023, recovered to SAR 91.1 billion in 2024, then slid to SAR 80.4 billion in 2025, 53% of the peak (SAMA Table 12f, Nov 2025). Contract volume: 108,800 in 2025 against 225,073 in 2020, down 52% in five years.

Non-bank lenders barely register. Finance companies wrote SAR 2.49 billion in 2025, down 3% and their lowest in seven years; combined origination was about SAR 82.9 billion against SAR 93.6 billion in 2024 (SAMA via Argaam; SAMA via Amlak, Feb 2026). This is, in practice, a bank market.

Our reading of why the flow keeps falling while the wider Saudi residential market still posts rent growth: the subsidised first-buyer wave is largely spent. Homeownership among Saudi families reached 66.24% by end-2025, up from 47% in 2016, closing on the 70% Vision 2030 target (Minister Al-Hogail via Zawya, Jul 2026). A programme built to move a country into ownership has mostly done it. What remains is a normal market, and normal markets are price-sensitive.

The monthly table is the demand gauge

SAMA's Table 12f is the fastest free read on Saudi housing demand, published monthly with value and contract counts. The recent slope is steep: after SAR 10.46 billion in January 2025, monthly bank origination fell to SAR 5.32 billion by June and SAR 4.47 billion by November (SAMA Table 12f, Nov 2025).

The annual headline hides where the damage sits. Cumulative January-October 2025 lending was actually up 1.66% year on year at SAR 72.37 billion (SAMA via Amlak, Nov 2025); the full-year figure fell 12% because Q4 2024, at SAR 30.1 billion, was the strongest quarter since the current chart series began in Q3 2023 and late 2025 collapsed against it (SAMA Table 12f, same bulletin). The decline is a second-half story, accelerating into year-end.

The forward indicators say 2026 prints will be worse. Ministry of Justice data show transaction value down 51.5% year on year in H1 2026, at SAR 82.2 billion (MOJ via Arab News, 6 Jul 2026), and 29,000 homes sold in Q1 2026, down 50%, with March alone down 62% (MoJ via AGBI, 12 May 2026). Mortgage origination follows transactions.

The villa share is a product signal

Villas took SAR 51.4 billion of 2025 bank mortgage lending, 64% of the total, against SAR 24.3 billion for apartments and SAR 4.7 billion for land (SAMA via Argaam, Feb 2026). Developers should read this split quarterly, because it is moving.

Villa financing peaked at SAR 96.19 billion in 2021 and has roughly halved since. Apartment financing peaked later, at SAR 28.09 billion in 2024, before easing to SAR 24.3 billion (SAMA via Amlak, Feb 2026). The contract mix has shifted harder than the value mix: apartments were 21,915 of 225,073 bank mortgage contracts in 2020, under 10%, and 28,085 of 122,302 in 2024, roughly 23% (SAMA Table 12f). Mortgaged land purchases have almost vanished: 35,609 contracts in 2020, 4,677 in 2024 (same table), a collapse that predates the current white land fee schedule.

Set the lending mix against the price data and the tension is obvious. GASTAT's Q2 2026 index has villa prices down 9.7% year on year while apartments rose 1.1% (GASTAT REPI, Q2 2026). The mortgage book remains two-thirds a villa bet at the exact moment villas are the weakest-priced residential product in the Kingdom. Demand is rotating toward apartments faster in units than in riyals, the expected result when the average loan sits at SAR 739,000 and villa tickets stop fitting inside it. For where that rotation lands geographically, see the Riyadh residential market.

What a mortgage in Saudi Arabia is priced off

The policy path is public and unambiguous. SAMA's repo rate went from 6.00% in mid-2024 to 5.00% on 18 December 2024 (SPA), stepped down through 2025, and reached 4.25% on 11 December 2025 (Saudi Gazette). The reverse repo has held at 3.75% through June 2026 (Trading Economics, citing SAMA). Three-month SAIBOR averaged 6.02% across 2024 and stood at 4.97% in November 2025 (SAMA Table 6, Nov-2025 bulletin).

Here is the uncomfortable read: 175 basis points of easing bought no recovery in origination. The monthly prints fell throughout the cutting cycle. Subsidy flow held up too: the Real Estate Development Fund deposited roughly SAR 12.4 billion into beneficiary accounts across 2025 (REDF via ArchUp). Cheaper money plus steady subsidy plus falling origination equals a demand problem the rate cycle cannot fix on its own; price and eligibility, not the cost of credit, are the binding constraint.

The stock, and the sukuk that fund it

Flow is shrinking; the stock is not. Outstanding bank real-estate loans grew from SAR 428.4 billion at end-2020 to SAR 883.3 billion at end-2024 and SAR 938.0 billion by Q3 2025 (SAMA Table 12e, Nov-2025 bulletin). That is 6.2% growth in nine months of a down year for origination. Mortgages are long-dated and the book is young; it will keep compounding long after the flow turns.

Omran estimate (SAMA-derived). SAMA publishes bank and finance-company loan books in separate tables and no combined total. Summing Table 12e (SAR 937,998 million, banks) and Table 4 (SAR 28,772 million, finance companies) in the same Nov-2025 bulletin gives total outstanding real-estate finance of SAR 966.8 billion at end-Q3 2025. Simple addition of two official cells, shown here because no single published line carries it.

The refinancing layer behind that stock is scaling fast. The Saudi Real Estate Refinance Company (SRC), the PIF-owned secondary-market vehicle, priced its first government-guaranteed international sukuk at USD 2 billion in February 2025, six times oversubscribed (SPA); a second at USD 2.5 billion in September 2025, 5.5 times oversubscribed (SPA); and a third at USD 2.75 billion in July 2026, 6.8 times oversubscribed, with the programme ceiling raised from USD 5 billion to USD 10 billion (Arab News). SRC also launched the Kingdom's first residential mortgage-backed securities in August 2025; no source discloses the transaction size, so it is n/a (Arab News).

Scale that against the banks: SRC's balance sheet stood at SAR 38.3 billion of assets at Q3 2025 (SAMA Table 1, same bulletin), about 4% of the bank real-estate book (38,325 / 937,998). International capital markets are visibly willing to fund far more Saudi mortgage paper than Saudi households currently demand. The backbone is being built ahead of the load it is meant to carry.

Five numbers SAMA never prints

The tables above are the best free mortgage dataset in the Gulf, and they still leave an underwriter blind on five points:

• The retail mortgage rate actually charged. SAMA publishes the repo rate and SAIBOR, not the spread banks add. No official series exists; bank product pages are inconsistent and non-primary.
• Loan-to-value and tenor. No sector-average LTV or maturity table is published anywhere official.
• Borrower nationality. The series never splits Saudi from expatriate borrowers, so the expat questions below can only be answered structurally.
• SRC's cumulative refinanced portfolio. Individual sukuk sizes are public; the total book they fund is not currently disclosed.
• The RMBS pool size. Confirmed as launched, size n/a.

We track the SAMA, MOJ, REDF and SRC releases monthly and reconcile them into one dated series, alongside the rest of the Saudi data stack. Request the underlying mortgage table, or scope a briefing against your own product mix.

FAQ

What is the current mortgage rate in Saudi Arabia? No official body publishes the retail rate banks charge. The anchors are public: SAMA's repo rate has been 4.25% since 11 December 2025 (Saudi Gazette) and three-month SAIBOR was 4.97% in November 2025 (SAMA). Banks price above those benchmarks; quotes vary by lender and tenor.

Is there mortgage financing available in Saudi Arabia? Yes, at scale. Banks and finance companies wrote about SAR 82.9 billion of new residential mortgages in 2025, and the average new bank mortgage was SAR 739,000 (SAMA via Amlak).

Can expats get a home loan in Saudi Arabia? Banks market home-finance products to residents, but SAMA's published series never splits borrowers by nationality, so no official expat lending figure exists, and eligibility terms are set bank by bank. The subsidised REDF pathway serves Saudi families. On the ownership side, the rules changed recently; see foreign property ownership in Saudi Arabia.

What is the Saudi Real Estate Refinance Company (SRC)? SRC is the PIF-owned company that refinances mortgage portfolios from Saudi lenders, the Kingdom's rough equivalent of a secondary mortgage institution. It has issued three government-guaranteed international sukuk totalling USD 7.25 billion since February 2025 under a programme now sized at USD 10 billion (Arab News, Jul 2026), and launched Saudi Arabia's first RMBS in August 2025.

What is the REDF housing subsidy? The Real Estate Development Fund deposits support payments into eligible beneficiaries' accounts under the Housing Support Program: roughly SAR 12.4 billion across 2025 (REDF via ArchUp). More than 122,000 families received housing support during 2024 (MOMAH).

Sources

• SAMA Monthly Statistical Bulletin, Nov 2025 (Tables 12f, 12e, 7, 4, 6, 1: mortgage flow, loan stock, rates, SRC balance sheet): link
• Argaam, FY2025 new residential mortgages citing SAMA (SAR 80.4bn, villa share, SAR 739k average): link
• Amlak Newspaper, FY2025 combined lending and product peaks citing SAMA: link
• Amlak Newspaper, Jan-Oct 2025 cumulative lending citing SAMA: link
• SPA, SAMA repo cut to 5.00% (18 Dec 2024): link
• Saudi Gazette, SAMA repo cut to 4.25% (11 Dec 2025): link
• Trading Economics, reverse repo at 3.75% through Jun 2026, citing SAMA: link
• SPA, SRC first international sukuk (USD 2bn, Feb 2025): link
• SPA, SRC second international sukuk (USD 2.5bn, Sep 2025): link
• Arab News, SRC third international sukuk and USD 10bn programme (Jul 2026): link
• Arab News, SRC first RMBS launch (Aug 2025): link
• Arab News, MOJ H1 2026 transaction data: link
• AGBI, Q1 2026 home sales citing Ministry of Justice: link
• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q2 2026 (villa and apartment sub-indices): link
• MOMAH, Housing Program Annual Report 2024 (122,000 families supported): link
• Zawya (Saudi Gazette byline), homeownership 66.24% at end-2025: link
• ArchUp, REDF Housing Support Program deposits, citing REDF/SPA: link