What Saudi Arabia's official property sales file leaves out
The Ministry of Justice publishes every registered property deed in Saudi Arabia. Only 9.6% of rows say what was sold, and one quarter is a duplicate.
The public record of real estate transactions in Saudi Arabia is a quarterly file of registered deeds. Since Q1 2020 the Ministry of Justice has registered deeds worth SAR 1,424.2 billion (MOJ). Only 9.6% of its rows say what was sold.
Key figures at a glance
| Metric | Value | Scope | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Published deed rows | 1,412,132 in 24 quarterly files | KSA national | Q1 2020 to Q4 2025 | MOJ |
| Usable rows, duplicated file dropped | 1,364,614 | KSA national | 23 quarters | MOJ |
| Registered consideration | SAR 1,424.2 billion | KSA national | 2020 to 2025 | MOJ |
| Traded area, 81.1% of it agricultural | 8,516.0 million sqm | KSA national | 2020 to 2025 | MOJ |
| Rows carrying a unit type | 131,447 (9.6%), all 2023 | KSA national | Q1 to Q3 2023 | MOJ |
| Sales, latest reachable quarter | 53,663 deeds worth SAR 72.29bn | Kingdom | Q2 2026 | REGA |
| National price index | 106.34 (2023 = 100), +1.3% y/y | Kingdom | Q2 2026 | GASTAT |
Where the deeds are published
The Ministry of Justice puts out one CSV per quarter under the KSA Open Data Licence, which allows derivative work if the ministry is credited. Grouped on the date inside each row, not the file name, the six years look like this:
| Year | Deeds | Registered value | Traded area |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 276,811 | SAR 345.2bn | 1,075.1m sqm |
| 2021 | 281,883 | SAR 202.8bn | 3,569.4m sqm |
| 2022 | 213,754 | SAR 218.1bn | 1,024.4m sqm |
| 2023 | 183,788 | SAR 203.3bn | 1,015.9m sqm |
| 2024 | 249,328 | SAR 281.2bn | 1,039.1m sqm |
| 2025 (Q1, Q3, Q4 only) | 159,038 | SAR 173.7bn | 792.2m sqm |
Riyadh region accounts for 34.2% of all deeds (MOJ, 2020 to 2025). Use the bulk CSVs for calculations, and REGA's real estate indicators platform, sourced to "Ministry of Justice and Real Estate Registry" (REGA), to check your totals. The Saudi source map sets it beside the other series.
Why the totals need care
Count follows paperwork. The transaction tax in force from 10 April 2025 charges 5% on a disposal "whether or not it has been documented" (سواء تم التوثيق أم لم يتم), and Article 6 of its regulation deals with "sham or concealed transactions" (ZATCA, regulation issued 24 March 2025). Undocumented sales never reach the file.
Value is distorted by a few bundled deeds. On 14 May 2020, nine separate Riyadh deeds each carry the same price of SAR 12,996,688,997, on plots of very different sizes (MOJ, 2020 Q2). The ten largest deeds make up 74.9% of Q2 2020 value, so a handful of registrations can swing a quarterly average.
Omran estimate. Repeated prices of SAR 50 million or more on the same date and city add up to SAR 139.9 billion, 9.8% of registered value (Omran measurement on the MOJ files). Without them the total falls to roughly SAR 1,284 billion. Smaller bundles slip under the threshold, so treat this as a floor.
Area is mostly farmland. Agricultural deeds are 4.0% of the count but 81.1% of the area from 2020 to 2025, and farmland explains almost all of the 2021 spike (MOJ, 2020 to 2025).
The file does not say villa, apartment or plot
Unit type appears only in the first three quarters of 2023, and was dropped after that (MOJ, Q1 to Q3 2023):
| Unit type | Share of typed rows |
|---|---|
| Land plots | 79.8% |
| Apartments | 16.2% |
| Villas | 0.18% |
GASTAT fills the gap with "a geospatial artificial intelligence (Geo AI) model" to classify transactions (GASTAT, Q4 2025). Its index is largely about land: residential and commercial plots weigh 68.685% of the Q2 2026 basket, villas 10.455% (GASTAT, Q2 2026). The headline rose 1.3% year on year while residential plots rose 6.3% and villas fell 9.7%, so the headline is a poor guide to villa prices. More on the price index page.
District medians from this file mix whatever registered that quarter. Each cell should show how many deeds it rests on, which is how our Riyadh land price table is built.
Two files to fix before loading
MOJ-Sales-2025-Q2.csv holds 47,518 rows, all dated between 1 April and 30 June 2024, and 44,831 of them are byte-identical to the 2024 Q2 file (MOJ). Loaded as labelled, it counts spring 2024 twice and invents a Q2 2025 of SAR 57.46 billion. There is no release calendar or revision note to warn you.
MOJ-Sales-2023-Q1.csv is the only quarter with a cadastral plan and parcel, on 78.6% of its rows (MOJ, Q1 2023). It also writes dates day-first, where the other files write year-first, and spells three regions differently. Group on the raw region name and 16,867 rows disappear.
Individual deeds are hard to see elsewhere. REGA's deal-level services need a Nafath sign-in, and REGA says its daily feed is shown "without any cleansing or processing" (REGA, 29 August 2026). SREM, the ministry's platform for trading, mortgages and deed issuance (SPA, 3 September 2024), never returned more than five transactions per zone when Omran tested it from inside the Kingdom in August 2026.
What the record leaves out
The file names neither buyer nor seller. It also does not separate a sale from an inheritance or a gift. Below region level the finest field is a free-text district, which reads "other" (أخرى) on 10.3% of the rows that have one (MOJ, 2020 to 2025). Joining it to the Real Estate Registry is possible, but the link between the two geographies is our choice and has to be disclosed.
Omran estimate. Applying the 2023 type mix to all usable rows gives roughly 1,089,000 land plots, 221,000 apartments and 2,500 villas over six years. It rests on three quarters of the thinnest year, so only the order of magnitude holds.
A quick test catches most extraction errors: a region cannot register fewer deeds than its own capital. In Q2 2026 Riyadh city alone had 13,637 sales, 25.4% of the national count (REGA, Riyadh city).
Omran holds all twenty-four files deduplicated, with the mislabelled quarter removed. Request the cleaned quarterly deed series or scope a district-level brief.
FAQ
Does the Ministry of Justice publish every property sale in Saudi Arabia? It publishes every sale that becomes a registered deed. The tax regime in force since 10 April 2025 assumes undocumented sales exist, and those never enter the file.
My quarterly totals do not match the published aggregates. Which one is wrong? Probably neither. SREM covers trading, mortgages and deed issuance for splits and merges (SPA, 3 September 2024). A headline built on that platform therefore counts operations, while the quarterly files count sale deeds only. Then check your loader for the mislabelled Q2 2025 file.
Sources
- Ministry of Justice, quarterly real estate sales open data (KSA Open Data Licence), read on the public mirror: link
- Ministry of Justice, 2025 Q2 file (the duplicated quarter): link
- Ministry of Justice, 2020 Q2 file (nine deeds at one price, 14 May 2020): link
- REGA, Real Estate Indicators Platform (Q2 2026 Kingdom card, daily series, source label): link
- REGA, Riyadh city indicators (13,637 transactions, Q2 2026): link
- REGA, live daily transactions view (the no-cleansing disclaimer): link
- REGA, deals service (Nafath sign-in): link
- ZATCA, RETT implementing regulation, Articles 2 and 6 (Arabic PDF, issued 24 March 2025): link
- ZATCA, real estate transaction tax law page (5% rate, law effective 10 April 2025): link
- GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q2 2026 tables (index 106.34, basket weights): link
- GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q4 2025 bulletin (methodology, Geo AI classifier): link
- Saudi Press Agency, Ministry of Justice statement on the SREM platform (3 September 2024): link