Saudi rental yields average about 4.5% across 12 cities

No ministry, regulator or statistics office in Saudi Arabia publishes a rental yield. REGA, the real estate regulator, publishes rents and sale prices in two separate files. We divided one by the other, for the same neighbourhood, quarter and property type.

The median gross residential yield comes out at about 4.5% for Q1 to Q3 2025, with Riyadh at 4.24% and Jeddah at 5.16%. After Q3 2025 the exercise can no longer be repeated, because REGA dropped the neighbourhood column from its sales file.

Key figures at a glance

How we built the yield

We call each match a cell. The grid holds 753 cells where REGA publishes both a neighbourhood rent and a neighbourhood price for the same quarter and property type. They cover 228 neighbourhoods. The median gross yield is 4.47%. One cell in ten yields less than 3.12%, and one in ten more than 6.25%.

The rent is the contract-weighted average of REGA's annual rent per sqm, taken from Ejar leases (Ejar is the national lease register). For the price we use transaction value over transacted area. REGA's own average price column is empty on 463 of 677 Riyadh rows in Q3 2025 (REGA sales, Q3 2025).

Of 2,282 neighbourhood pairs with both figures, 1,529 have fewer than ten observations and were dropped. That leaves 753. Thin cells are not driving the median: raise the bar to 100 leases and 30 deeds and 273 cells remain, at a median of about 4.78%.

We screened out one published row. For Q3 2025 REGA records 14 villa sales in Jeddah's Al Fayhaa at SAR 13.17 billion over 56,186 sqm. That is SAR 262,830/sqm, roughly fifty times any other price in the file (REGA sales, Makkah region Q3 2025). It would print a yield of 0.13%. This is why we quote the median and the middle of the spread rather than the highest and lowest values.

The files carry the KSA Open Data Licence, which allows redistribution and derivative works (licence terms as republished with the files).

Jeddah yields more than Riyadh

Six cities have enough cells to give a median, from Riyadh's 428 down to Taif's 13. Six more have only one to eight cells each, and we do not quote a figure for them.

Riyadh makes up more than half the grid and sits nearly a point below Jeddah. Riyadh prices have run ahead of rents, as our note on the Riyadh residential market shows. Makkah is lowest of the six, at 3.75%.

A city median helps to narrow a search. Valuing a building needs the neighbourhood figure. In Riyadh, Al Olaya apartments yield 2.00% in Q2 2025: SAR 395.1/sqm of rent across 2,548 leases, against SAR 19,781/sqm on 31 sales. Qurtubah villas yield 13.63% in Q1 2025, on 185 leases and 43 sales. That is close to a factor of seven inside one city, so the useful answer is district by district.

By property type, apartments come out highest, at 4.75% across 418 cells, and floors lowest, at 3.50%. That ranking is unreliable, for a reason we come to below.

Riyadh rents after the cap

Riyadh apartments rented at SAR 266.05/sqm/yr in Q1 2025, on 163,891 contracts. By Q4 2025 the figure was SAR 276.00, on 185,107 contracts. Rents rose over the year, but in Q4 2025, the first full quarter under the rent cap, every residential type fell against Q3. Apartment rents fell 2.1% and villa rents 3.5% in that quarter. Coverage also widened from 185 to 189 districts, so part of the fall reflects a different mix (rent levels).

The rules of 25 September 2025 suspend annual rent increases on Riyadh leases for five years. They cover residential and commercial, existing and new contracts. A vacant unit must be re-let at its last Ejar rent. Only property never leased before can be let at a freely agreed rent (REGA).

In practice, the only market rent left in Riyadh is the first rent on a new unit. Existing stock is tied to its own lease history until 2030. No public statistic shows the gap, because Ejar does not record the age of the building. REGA's board can extend the rules to other cities with the approval of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs. Any yield forecast for Jeddah, Dammam or Khobar should allow for that.

Enforcement so far looks light: three weeks in, REGA reported 268 complaints and 18 landlords in breach (REGA). In GASTAT's consumer price index, Riyadh rents were up 15.70% year on year in August 2025 (GASTAT CPI, Aug 2025, table 3.2) and 5.26% in July 2026 (GASTAT CPI, Jul 2026, table 3.2). That is a slowdown, but it does not match REGA's per-sqm series.

Why many published Saudi yields run too high

The common shortcut divides a neighbourhood rent by a whole-city price, because the city price is easy to find. But the city price is lower. On a like-for-like basis, REGA's Q4 2025 Riyadh city price is 5.2% below the Q3 2025 neighbourhood grid for apartments, 19.7% below for villas and 24.1% below for duplexes (REGA sales, Q3 2025 and Q4 2025). So the yield comes out high, and highest on the types investors quote most.

Done that way, Riyadh villas show 9.01% for Q4 2025: SAR 372.27 of rent (REGA rental, Q4 2025) over SAR 4,132.4 of price (REGA sales, Q4 2025). The like-for-like figure is 7.45% in Q3 2025, the last quarter it can be built. Most of that gap comes from the cheaper city price in the divisor.

The data stops at Q3 2025

REGA's sales files carried a neighbourhood column up to Q3 2025 and dropped it from Q4 2025. Nothing replaces that detail, so a 2026 neighbourhood yield is an estimate at best.

REGA's Real Estate Indicators platform does publish sale-price and rent indices through Q2 2026 (REGA, read 29 August 2026), but on an unstated base, so they cannot be turned into a price per sqm. The files with actual levels come through a public mirror last updated on 22 May 2026. That is why our rents stop at Q4 2025 and our prices at Q1 2026.

What the files cannot tell you

Every yield here is gross. It ignores service charges, owners' association fees, vacancy, management and tax, none of which any Saudi authority publishes (gross against net). Ejar does not record empty units, so a gross yield assumes a full year of rent.

There is also a problem with the square metre. REGA does not define area on either file, and its own columns suggest the two files measure it differently. Working back from each file on the 753 cells, the typical unit size differs by type.

The types with the widest gap in measured size are also the ones whose yields look out of line. So a claim that one type out-yields another may only reflect how REGA measured them.

Omran estimate. If we put each type's price on the rent side's square metre (yield divided by the size ratio above), the ranking flips.

Type	Median yield	Adjusted yield
Apartments	4.75%	3.74%
Villas	4.32%	3.11%
Duplexes	4.31%	3.12%
Floors	3.50%	3.93%

The spread narrows from 1.25 points to about 0.8, and floors move from last to first. This applies a median ratio to a median yield, so treat it as an illustration. The overall median holds up. The comparison between villas and apartments does not.

Omran estimate. Real estate transaction tax is 5%, in force since 10 April 2025 (ZATCA). The buyer pays it, so it lowers the return on money spent: 4.47% / 1.05 = 4.26% on the median cell, before any running costs.

We have not checked a Saudi policy or mortgage rate at source, so we do not compare the 4.47% with a cost of borrowing.

Ask for the 753-cell yield table, or scope a briefing on the cities and quarters you need.

FAQ

What is the average rental yield in Saudi Arabia, and who says so? No authority publishes one. Calculated from REGA's own files, the median is about 4.5% (4.47% on 753 cells) across 12 cities for Q1 to Q3 2025.

Did the September 2025 rent freeze stop Riyadh rents? It slowed them. Riyadh rents in the consumer price index were still up 5.26% year on year in July 2026, against 15.70% in August 2025. The rules suspend annual increases for five years. They do not cut existing rents.

If rents are capped in Riyadh, do yields fall? Only if prices keep rising, and the two publishers disagree on that. GASTAT's price index for Riyadh region fell 4.4% year on year in Q1 2026 and rose 4.2% in Q2 2026. Its largest weight is residential land. REGA's Riyadh city prices went the other way in that Q1, with apartments up 2.3% and villas up 4.0% on the quarter.

Can I get a yield for my city? Probably not, because neighbourhood sale prices are missing. Sixteen cities have both a neighbourhood rent and price for the same quarter and type, and twelve have enough data. Another 49 cities file all their sales under أخرى, "other", which cannot be placed on a map.

Sources

• REGA quarterly rental indicators, Riyadh Q4 2025 (rents, 2025 series): link
• REGA quarterly rental indicators, Riyadh Q1 2025 (file family, residential fill, header variants): link
• REGA quarterly sales indicators, Riyadh Q3 2025 (neighbourhood grain, null price column): link
• REGA quarterly sales indicators, Riyadh Q4 2025 (city-level prices only): link
• REGA quarterly sales indicators, Riyadh Q1 2026 (latest prices available in the public mirror): link
• REGA quarterly sales indicators, Makkah region Q3 2025 (the Jeddah Al Fayhaa villa row, screened out): link
• REGA quarterly indicator files, both families as published (the grid joins all 78 sales files to all 52 rental files): link
• KSA Open Data Licence terms as republished with the REGA files (redistribution, derivative works): link
• REGA Real Estate Indicators platform (rent and price indices to Q2 2026): link
• REGA, five-year suspension of annual rental increases in Riyadh (25 September 2025): link
• REGA, rental violations enforcement announcement (16 October 2025): link
• ZATCA, Real Estate Transaction Tax at 5%, in force 10 April 2025: link
• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q2 2026 (residential index, Riyadh region series): link
• GASTAT, Consumer Price Index July 2026 (actual rentals, national series, Riyadh at +5.26%): link
• GASTAT, Consumer Price Index August 2025 (the Riyadh actual-rent rate of +15.70%, table 3.2): link