Saudi Arabia Office Market: The Rent Series Nobody Quotes

The Saudi Arabia office market is priced in a government file that almost nobody opens. REGA's Ejar-based rental indicators carry مكتب - تجاري (office, commercial) as a property type, city by city and quarter by quarter, with the registered contract count beside every cell: Riyadh's four 2024 quarters read 566, 601, 602 and 639 (REGA, Riyadh region), Jeddah's read 500, 513, 514 and 540 (REGA, Makkah region), and 78,917 office leases were registered nationally in 2024, 2.4% of all registered lease contracts (REGA, 13 regional files). Then the money disappears. Across all 52 quarterly files covering 2025, every one of the 23,707 commercial rows carries zero in both rent columns while the contract counts keep arriving (REGA), so the one official series that could have measured Riyadh's five-year commercial rent freeze went dark three quarters before the freeze took effect on 25 September 2025.

Every figure here is dated and linked to its primary source. Where a number exists only in private brokerage surveys, this page says so and publishes a labelled Omran estimate instead, the rule the Riyadh office market and Dubai office market pages run on.

Key figures at a glance

Saudi Arabia office market rents, city by city

Riyadh's office rent indicator reads 639 for Q4 2024 on 10,805 registered contracts (REGA, Riyadh region), Jeddah's 540 on 4,727 (REGA, Makkah region), and the series runs city by city back to 2019. The coverage is asymmetric and that asymmetry is the point: REGA lists offices among the rented property types and confines its sales indicators to residential land, villas, apartments, duplexes and floors (REGA). An official office rent signal exists. An official office price signal does not.

REGA never states the unit. The 2019 to 2024 files carry one column, المتوسط, the average, for every property type at once, and for Q4 2024 in Riyadh it returns SAR 28,323.80 against an apartment and SAR 638.98 against an office (REGA, Riyadh region). No Riyadh office lease costs SAR 639 a year.

Omran reading of the unit. The commercial rows are rent per square metre per year; the residential rows are rent per unit per year. REGA's successor files split that column into two named ones from Q1 2025, متوسط الايجار and متوسط الايجار لكل متر مربع, average rent and average rent per square metre. The levels also sit inside the band implied by listed funds' FY2025 disclosures, annual income over building area: SAR 239/sqm at a government-let Jeddah office, SAR 874/sqm at a fully-let single-tenant Riyadh office, SAR 1,153/sqm at a fully-let Ad Diriyah office (SEDCO Capital REIT, 31 Dec 2025). A prime single-tenant building sitting above a city-wide contract average is the ordering you would expect. It supports the reading without proving it.

Omran estimate: contract-weighted office rent by city, 2024. Contracts times average, summed over the four 2024 quarters and divided by total contracts, from REGA's thirteen regional files (Riyadh, Makkah, Eastern Province and ten more). Cells under 30 contracts are suppressed and 32 cities clear that floor, so this is a selection rather than a ranking: the five busiest office markets by contract count, plus the city topping the list. Ad Diriyah averages 711 on 94 contracts, 18% above Riyadh, so Riyadh is not the Kingdom's dearest office market on REGA data.

City	2024 office rent (SAR/sqm/yr, Omran-weighted)	n (contracts)
Ad Diriyah	711	94
Riyadh	603	39,547
Jeddah	517	16,887
Al Khobar	466	4,775
Makkah	391	3,153
Dammam	347	5,753
Kingdom, all cities	519	78,917

Omran estimate: the year Riyadh passed Jeddah. The same weighting, run year by year on the same files, offices only. Riyadh averaged 447 in 2021 against Jeddah's 455 (n = 15,409 and 6,732) and 477 against 489 in 2022 (n = 25,915 and 12,390). It went past Jeddah in 2023, and by 2024 stood at 603 against 517 (n = 39,547 and 16,887): up 34.9% in three years against Jeddah's 13.8% and Dammam's 8.6%, and 17% clear of Jeddah by 2024.

The Kingdom's biggest office market was the cheaper of the two large ones until 2022. What opened after that shows up in registered lease contracts rather than in a survey, in the years the headquarters programme's procurement condition began to bite.

Why the rent stopped and the contract count did not

The values stop; the counts do not. In the same 2025 files that zero all 23,707 commercial rows, 52,640 of 52,641 residential rows carry a rent, and Riyadh city still registers 11,319 office leases across 149 districts in Q4 2025 (REGA).

The strange part is that the 2025 schema is better than the one it replaced. It adds district (الحي) granularity, and it is where the two named rent columns quoted above come from. Whoever rebuilt these files kept every field, added two, improved the geography, and shipped the commercial rows with the price zeroed out.

Set that against the calendar. REGA's last priced office cell is Q4 2024, the freeze arrived three quarters later, and no official series ever measured the level it froze.

Two limits on that. It holds through the most recent open-data files available to us, refreshed 22 May 2026, and the portal itself does not answer our infrastructure, so a later restoration would be invisible from here. REGA has not gone quiet in general: its March 2026 bulletin, the most recent we hold, reports 46,737 non-residential lease contracts, down 2% year on year, worth SAR 3,600,262,979, up 6% (REGA). Read that series year on year and never month on month: REGA attributes February 2026's volume to a surge in registration under the new landlord-tenant provisions.

How the RHQ programme becomes a signed lease

The regional headquarters programme is usually reported as a count: more than 700 international companies by the end of 2025, against a 2030 target of 500 beaten five years early (RCRC). The count is not the interesting part. What turns it into office demand is what a company signs to keep the benefit.

The benefit is 0% corporate income tax and 0% withholding tax for a renewable thirty years from the date of licensing, under rules a ZATCA board resolution set on 4 February 2024. Its economic substance test requires "a physical office in KSA, which may be either owned or leased", space "proportional to the activities it carries out", three executives at Executive Director or Vice President level, and Kingdom operating expenditure that ZATCA says generally includes rental fees (ZATCA). The programme page, read in August 2026, adds 15 full-time employees within a year, and the municipality step demands a lease, title deed or investment contract plus "an external photograph of the RHQ office, clearly showing its prominent signage" (RHQ Programme). A multinational must also hold a valid MISA RHQ licence when it bids for a Saudi government contract (MISA). A photographed door with a sign on it is a documentary condition of a tax rate, which is why the regional headquarters programme belongs inside a leasing model, not a paragraph about sentiment.

Omran estimate: the programmatic floor under RHQ office demand. More than 700 licensed headquarters, each required to employ at least 15 full-time staff within a year, is at least 10,500 people who must be seated in Kingdom offices for the 0% rate to survive an audit. At 10 sqm per workstation that is 105,000 sqm of occupied floor; at 15 sqm, 157,500 sqm. Both are floors, not forecasts: 15 employees is a licence condition rather than an average headcount, and nobody publishes what RHQ entities actually occupy.

How much office space Saudi Arabia has

No Saudi authority publishes total office floorspace, for the Kingdom, a region or a city. What exists is what developers state about their own sites, and only one of those statements is solid. KAFD's statistics block, read in August 2026, gives more than 908,000 sqm of office space across 95 towers on a 1.6 million sqm site (KAFD, Arabic). Take the same statistic off the English page and you publish nonsense: it prints "908+ sqm", the thousands unit dropped, a financial district smaller than a villa (KAFD, English).

The other number in circulation has quietly changed meaning. PIF's release of 16 February 2023 announced New Murabba with more than 25 million sqm of floor area, more than 104,000 homes, 9,000 hotel rooms and 1.4 million sqm of office space (PIF, capture of 18 August 2026). The developer's own site, read in August 2026, describes a 14.1 square kilometre downtown, publishes that same 1.4 million sqm under the subtitle "Retail GFA", and states no office area at all (New Murabba). A supply schedule still carrying 1.4 million sqm of New Murabba office is carrying a number its own developer now attaches to shops.

What listed landlords disclose, and why 100% is not the typical reading

Listed funds are the only permitted source reporting occupancy building by building, which makes them more useful than any headline and more treacherous. Riyad REIT reports 98% portfolio occupancy on 799,463 sqm of net leasable area at 31 December 2025, then disarms both figures in its own footnotes: occupancy is leased asset value over total leasable value, and the area includes an international portfolio, 11 of the fund's 26 assets (Riyad REIT). Value-weighted, cross-border, and not a Saudi office occupancy rate.

The asset cards underneath are the real disclosure. Olaya Tower and Al-Raed Building, its two pure Riyadh offices, are 100% let to single government-related tenants. The Residence and Al-Tamyuz Center, both Riyadh retail-and-office assets, are 88% let and carry the two shortest weighted lease terms in the whole fund, 1.18 and 0.57 years. Stop at 98% and you miss that the fund's shortest-dated income sits in its under-let Riyadh offices.

That is where the Riyadh freeze lands, and it is the part of the policy nobody models. The provisions of 25 September 2025 suspend annual increases on residential and commercial leases, existing and new, inside Riyadh's urban boundaries, for five years. A previously-let unit that falls vacant must be re-let at the rental value of its last executed Ejar contract, and a landlord may object only after substantial structural renovation or where the last lease was concluded before 2024 (REGA). The exposure that matters is lease vintage, not vacancy. An owner who registered a Riyadh office lease in 2024 or 2025, at the top of the run the estimate above puts at 34.9%, is fixed at that number; one whose last lease predates 2024 has a route out. A lease with 0.57 years left rolls straight into the frozen regime.

Two of the three funds read for this page disclose occupancy asset by asset. Twelve of their buildings contain offices: five report 71%, 88%, 88%, 93% and 97% at 31 December 2025, and the other seven report 100%, every one of them let whole to a single tenant (Riyad REIT; SEDCO Capital REIT). A single-tenant building is either full or empty, which is why 100% is a lease structure rather than a market reading. The third fund publishes no asset-level occupancy and reports its portfolio 87.35% leased and 12.65% vacant (Mulkia). It sets the other standard trap: the "100%" column beside each of its properties is the fund's share of asset income, not occupancy. None of these funds grades its buildings, because no permitted source does; see what Grade A office means in the Gulf, and how to read a fund report in the Saudi REIT disclosure guide.

The index quoted for Saudi commercial property has no offices in it

GASTAT's Real Estate Price Index has exactly eight property types and none is an office: residential plot, villa, apartment and floor; commercial plot, building and gallery or shop; agricultural land (GASTAT, Q2 2026). The commercial sector weighs 25.404%, being 22.836% commercial plot, 2.015% building and 0.553% gallery or shop, so 89.9% of that leg is land. Note where things sit: "building" (عمارة) is classified commercial, so an apartment block sold whole is a commercial transaction here. Sheet 3 publishes only a general index per region, with no sector split.

This is the number professionals misread most often, and the misreading has an authoritative-looking source. SAMA's Financial Stability Report 2025 states that "the commercial real estate index has increased by 25.7 percent since 2021, reflecting higher demand", and credits the headquarters programme (SAMA). That sentence gets recycled as evidence of Saudi office price growth. It is the GASTAT commercial series and nothing else: a 2024 annual average of 106.07 over a 2021 average of 84.35 (GASTAT), in a basket nine-tenths land, with no office line and no regional breakdown. On the Q2 2026 print that basket is falling: 111.96, down 3.2% year on year from a Q2 2025 peak of 115.69. Read it as a development-cost signal, never as a statement about what an office costs.

Six office numbers Saudi Arabia does not publish

These are the inputs a fund model or an occupier strategy turns on, and nobody in the permitted universe publishes them: total office stock at any geography, vacancy at any geography, any grade classification of Saudi stock, office rent after Q4 2024, net absorption and pipeline, and office floorspace inside the giga-projects, now that the one published figure has been relabelled retail.

Omran floor for Riyadh office stock. The only defensible supply number here covers a single district: KAFD's 908,000 sqm, stated by the developer about its own site and labelled مساحات مكتبية in the Arabic source. Omran does not add New Murabba's 1.4 million sqm, for the reason above. The true Riyadh total is larger by an unknown multiple. We publish the floor and decline the ceiling, because a ceiling here would be a guess wearing a decimal point.

Closing the gap between that floor and a usable supply model is not PDF work. It is parsing Ejar contract files row by row, reading fund reports at asset level instead of at headline level, and opening the Arabic page every time the English one says something else, which on KAFD's own site is the difference between 908,000 sqm and 908. Ask for the office rent table behind this page, or scope a briefing on one city.

FAQ

Does anyone officially publish Saudi office rents? Yes, and almost nobody uses it. REGA's Ejar-based rental indicators carry office as a property type by city and quarter, with contract counts, from 2019 through Q4 2024: Riyadh's Q4 2024 cell reads 639 on 10,805 contracts, Jeddah's 540 on 4,727. From Q1 2025 every commercial rent cell is zero while the counts continue, in files last refreshed 22 May 2026.

What is the Saudi office vacancy rate? No authority publishes one, at any geography. The closest primary evidence is asset-level occupancy disclosed by listed funds at 31 December 2025: 71% at a multi-tenant Jeddah office, 88% at two Riyadh retail-and-office assets, 93% and 97% at two more multi-tenant buildings, 100% at the seven let whole to a single tenant, and a third fund's portfolio 12.65% vacant. Every city-wide Grade A vacancy number in circulation is a brokerage product.

The central bank said commercial real estate is up 25.7% since 2021. Up 25.7% in what? In the GASTAT commercial index, which contains no office category, is 89.9% commercial land by weight and carries no regional breakdown. The 25.7% is that index's 2024 annual average of 106.07 against its 2021 average of 84.35, so it says nothing about what an office costs in any Saudi city.

Does the Riyadh rent freeze apply to office leases? Yes. The provisions approved on 25 September 2025 suspend annual increases in the total rental value of residential and commercial leases, existing and new, inside Riyadh's urban boundaries, for five years. A previously-let commercial unit that falls vacant must be re-let at the rent in its last registered Ejar contract, and REGA's board may extend the provisions to other cities with CEDA approval.

Sources

• REGA, Real Estate Indicators platform FAQ (offices covered for rent, excluded from sales): link
• REGA (Ejar) rental indicators, Riyadh region, 2019 to 2024, obtained from a public mirror of the Saudi open-data portal: link
• REGA (Ejar) rental indicators, all 13 regional files (the national office contract count and the contract-weighted estimates): link
• REGA (Ejar) rental indicators, Makkah region (Jeddah and Makkah cells): link
• REGA (Ejar) rental indicators, Eastern Province (Dammam and Al Khobar cells): link
• REGA (Ejar) quarterly rental indicators 2025, zeroed commercial values, snapshot 22 May 2026: link
• REGA, Monthly Bulletin of the Saudi Real Estate Market, March 2026 (non-residential leasing): link
• REGA, Riyadh landlord and tenant provisions of 25 September 2025 (the five-year freeze): link
• Royal Commission for Riyadh City, regional headquarters programme (more than 700 by end-2025): link
• ZATCA, Guideline for Regional Headquarters in KSA (thirty-year 0% rate, physical-office condition): link
• ZATCA, Regional Headquarters tax rules page (board resolution of 4 February 2024): link
• RHQ Programme official site (15-employee minimum, municipality licence documents): link
• Ministry of Investment, RHQ Investor Manual (government-procurement condition): link
• KAFD official site, Arabic (more than 908,000 sqm of office space): link
• KAFD official site, English (the "908+ sqm" unit error, 95 towers, 1.6M sqm site): link
• Public Investment Fund, New Murabba release of 16 February 2023, archived capture: link
• New Murabba Development Company, homepage (1.4M sqm relabelled "Retail GFA"): link
• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q2 2026 workbook (weights, levels, eight property types): link
• SAMA, Financial Stability Report 2025 (commercial index up 25.7% since 2021): link
• Riyad REIT Fund, Annual Report 2025 (asset cards, occupancy definition, WAULT): link
• SEDCO Capital REIT, Annual Report 2025 (office assets, occupancy, income, WALE): link
• Mulkia Gulf Real Estate REIT, Annual Report 2025 (87.35% leased, income-share column): link