Why the official index can't tell you which Saudi region is most expensive

You cannot rank Saudi regions on the official price index. All thirteen regional series are set to 100.00 for their 2023 annual average. So Riyadh at 115.98 and Al Baha at 77.91 in Q2 2026 each measure distance from their own starting point. Neither says which region is dearer (GASTAT).

What you can compare is how fast each region moved. On 2023 to 2025 annual averages, Riyadh rose 11.7% and the Eastern Province fell 3.8%. For riyal levels you need a second publisher, measuring something else. REGA's Q1 2026 sales records put a Riyadh apartment at SAR 5,862 per sqm on 3,133 deeds, against SAR 3,876 in Jeddah (REGA).

Key figures at a glance

Why the thirteen regional indices cannot be ranked

Sheet 3 of the Q2 2026 workbook has a row for the 2023 annual average. In it, the Kingdom and all thirteen regions read 100. Nothing in the file sets one region against another. Al Baha at 77.91 is 22% below its own 2023 level, and Riyadh is 16% above its own.

Under Comparability, it says the data "are fully comparable geographically as the data used cover all regions of Saudi Arabia" (GASTAT). The sentence is about coverage, and ranking needs more than that.

There is no city in the release either. One Makkah region figure covers seventeen governorates, including Jeddah, Makkah city and Taif (REGA). That is why our Jeddah page prices the city off deeds instead (how REPI is built).

How each region moved by Q2 2026

In Q2 2026, annual change ran from +10.4% in Al Jouf to -10.1% in Hail. The national general index stood at 106.34, up 1.3%.

The fairer window is 2023 to 2025 annual averages. On that basis, eight of thirteen regions sat below their own base.

GASTAT, Q2 2026 workbook. The rate columns compare across regions. The level column does not.

Two of those rows are often swapped when the quarter is quoted. The -5.4%, and the 92.22 that goes with it, belong to Al Qaseem. The Eastern Province printed 95.73 and -2.5%. GASTAT's bulletin confirms it: Al-Jawf 10.4%, Hail -10.1%, Qassim -5.4% (bulletin).

One quarter can swing hard. The Eastern Province printed +6.9% in Q1 2026 and -2.5% three months later. The better figure to forecast from is -3.8% across 2023 to 2025.

Tabouk shows how little the giga-projects have moved prices so far. Two years of peak NEOM construction moved the region 2.9%, and it printed -1.7% in Q2 2026.

The most expensive city in Saudi Arabia, on deeds and on rent

No Saudi authority ranks cities by price. The closest proxy is REGA's average apartment price per square metre in each region's main city, on deeds registered in Q1 2026. It runs from SAR 5,862 in Riyadh down to SAR 1,716 in Najran.

Apartments, residential use, Q1 2026 (REGA). Riyadh is 3.4 times Najran. Apartments are the fairest unit to compare, because one flat is much like another. The villa row is suppressed in five of these fifteen cities, and Al Baha has no villa row at all.

REGA does not say when it hides a price, so we checked. We hold 78 quarterly sales files with 21,985 rows. Every row with five or fewer transactions has no price per metre, and 61% of rows publish no price at all. That is why Al Bahah (3 deeds) and Sakaka (10) are blank.

Rents tell a similar story at the top, with a narrower spread. In REGA's Ejar-based city files, a Riyadh apartment averaged SAR 28,324 a year in Q4 2024 on 176,769 contracts. Jeddah averaged SAR 23,768 and Buraidah SAR 12,895 (REGA). That is 2.2 times top to bottom, against 3.4 times on price per metre.

Further down, the two rankings split. Najran has the lowest price per square metre of the thirteen cities with a published price, but its rent sits mid-table, ninth of fifteen. Buraidah is the reverse: the lowest rent in the file, while its price per metre comes eleventh of thirteen.

Riyadh rents rose 48.2% over the five years to Q4 2024, while Abha's fell 8.7%. Four regional capitals were cheaper to rent in 2024 than in 2019.

Since then Riyadh has frozen annual increases on residential and commercial leases for five years from 25 September 2025. The same announcement lets REGA's board extend the freeze to other cities, with approval from the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (REGA). The city rent files end at Q4 2024. A second REGA rental series, by district rather than city, runs to Q4 2025 in the files we hold.

Why Riyadh land looks cheaper than it is

In the Q1 2026 files, a metre of Riyadh city residential land reads SAR 373, against SAR 2,383 in Jeddah (REGA). The average Riyadh land deed that quarter covered 2,306 sqm, against 1,888 in Jeddah. On land, the price per metre mostly tells you the size of the plots that sold.

Riyadh land read SAR 2,437.33/sqm in Q4 2025 and SAR 372.72 a quarter later. Over the same step, the average deed area jumped from 1,268 sqm to 2,306 sqm. For Q2 2026, REGA's indicators platform shows SAR 579.08, with the average area back down to 1,850.5 sqm (REGA platform).

Our reading is that the mix of plots sold drove most of this. On 29 March 2025 Riyadh released more land north of the city, bringing the total to 81.48 km2 (SPA). Large plots on the edge raise the average deed area and pull the price per metre down, even if nothing has repriced. No publisher explains the break, so it remains a hypothesis.

The method matters too. Take the same Q1 2026 Riyadh land deeds. The open file says 372.72 and the platform says 397.42. Dividing total value by total area gives 687, which is 84% above the open-file figure. On apartments the methods agree: SAR 5,862/sqm published, SAR 5,856 by division. REGA's price cuts the extreme deals, which barely touches flats and changes land a lot. So the apartment figure is safe to use (the platform, card by card).

On our arithmetic, Riyadh apartments went from SAR 6,058/sqm in Q1 2024 to SAR 5,856 in Q1 2026. That is down 3.3% over eight quarters.

This is also why the regional index is not a house price index. Land makes up 70.62% of the basket by weight at Q2 2026. Residential plots alone account for 45.849% (GASTAT). Over the same eight quarters in which Riyadh flats lost 3.3%, the Riyadh regional index rose 8.6% in 2024 and another 2.9% in 2025 (GASTAT).

Where the regional record stops

Five things a regional brief needs are missing from the public record.

• No city-level GASTAT index.
• No regional weights, so the national +1.3% cannot be split by region.
• No riyal prices in the price index.
• No non-residential record for all thirteen regions after 2023. REGA's general sales file stops at Q3 2023.
• No population by region in the GASTAT Population Estimates Publication 2024, so per-capita figures are n/a.

Omran estimate: average residential deed value by region, Q1 2026. Adding up REGA's regional totals (REGA) gives SAR 41.38bn on 49,607 deeds, or about SAR 834,000 per residential deed nationally. This is our own calculation. It reflects what a region buys (land, flats or villas) as much as what those cost, and the small regions' totals are rounded, so their per-deed figures carry real error.

The same counts show the thirteen indices are not equally reliable. Three regions carried 84.8% of national residential deed value in Q1 2026. Al Baha registered 205 residential deeds, against 13,927 in Riyadh. An index built on so few deals can swing just on which properties happened to sell. Al Baha's fall from 123.54 in Q2 2021 to 77.91 in Q2 2026 (GASTAT) looks like that. Note that 205 is REGA's count, while GASTAT counts every registered transaction.

The two policies most likely to move regional prices next follow city boundaries, which the regional index does not use. One is the Riyadh rent freeze. The other is the non-Saudi ownership system, in force from 22 January 2026. It treats Riyadh, Jeddah, Makkah and Madinah as cities and promised a Geographical Zones Document in Q1 2026 (REGA). No official index uses those boundaries yet.

We hold the regional tables behind this page, with deal counts and sources, plus city cuts. You can ask for them here, and the national picture is on our residential market page.

FAQ

Which is the most expensive city in Saudi Arabia? On REGA's apartment price per square metre for Q1 2026, the one measure that compares across regions, it is Riyadh at SAR 5,862/sqm on 3,133 deeds, ahead of Jeddah at 3,876 and Al Khobar at 3,712.

Can I rank Saudi regions by GASTAT's price index? No. Every regional series is set to its own 2023 = 100. Al Baha at 77.91 and Riyadh at 115.98 in Q2 2026 measure distance from two different starting points. You can compare rates, not levels. On rates, eight of the thirteen regions were below their own 2023 base in 2025.

Why does Riyadh land look cheaper than Jeddah land? On land, price per square metre mostly reflects plot size. Riyadh's average residential land deed in Q1 2026 covered 2,306 sqm, against 1,888 in Jeddah.

Where does the government publish an actual riyal price by region? Not in the price index, which has no price levels. Use REGA's quarterly sales files, one per region. They give deal count, total value, total area and an average price per metre by city and property type. The newest we hold is Q1 2026.

Sources

• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q2 2026 workbook (regional series, the 2023 = 100 row, basket weights): link
• GASTAT, REPI Q2 2026 bulletin (regional rates named in prose and in Figure 3): link
• GASTAT, REPI methodology and quality report (base period, comparability wording): link
• REGA, open data (quarterly sales and rental indicator files by region; publisher REGA, read by us from a public mirror of the national portal, which does not answer our servers): link
• REGA, Real Estate Indicators platform, Riyadh (Q2 2026 land print, deed areas, platform average): link
• REGA, Riyadh five-year rent freeze from 25 September 2025 and its extension clause: link
• REGA, non-Saudi property ownership system in force 22 January 2026: link
• Saudi Press Agency, 29 March 2025 Riyadh land directive (81.48 km2 released, serviced-plot programme): link