Omnia MarketsMarket data · Saudi Arabia · Riyadh
Riyadh rent burden on households falls to about 15%.
The Real Estate General Authority chief said the share of household income spent on rent in the capital dropped from more than 17.5% in September 2025 after more than a year and a half of real-estate balance measures.
Abdullah Al-Hammad, chief executive of the Real Estate General Authority, said the rent burden on households in Riyadh had fallen from more than 17.5% in September 2025 to about 15%. Argaam reported his remarks in Arabic. He spoke at a legal governance conference at King Saud University and called the change one of the first measured effects of the real-estate balance decisions.
Al-Hammad added that the most vulnerable households had previously been paying more than 30% of their income on rent. He said a drop of about 2% in the rent burden was a concrete result of those decisions in Riyadh more than a year and a half after they were adopted. He also noted that Crown Prince directives required monitoring of real-estate indicators and periodic reports on results and challenges. No city-wide average rent figure or fresh transaction data accompanied the burden percentages.
From the JournalRiyadh vs Jeddah: where to live, and what changes by neighbourhood.Our take
Omnia Desk
Tenant pressure has eased on paper; investor yield maths still needs a local rent check.
A lower reported rent-to-income ratio in Riyadh matters for anyone modelling rental yield or exit pricing, yet it does not rewrite the purchase bands we already track. The authority’s latest burden figure signals less strain on local tenants after the balance measures. It does not by itself cut listed sale prices or change what a foreign buyer can own.
Set the news against the medians in our Riyadh off-plan apartment prices report: the median two-bedroom on the Al Majdiah lists stood at SAR 1,219,000 and north schemes ran SAR 10,009 to SAR 12,677 per square metre on 1 October 2026. Those sale figures sit beside, not inside, the new burden ratio. Completions such as Sadu by Al Majdiah still start from SAR 1,919,000. The practical check is current asking rents in the specific district against the income assumption you use, not a city-wide 15% headline alone.
Sources
About Omnia Markets- 1Argaam (Arabic) · 29 October 2026رئيس هيئة العقار: انخفاض عبء الإيجار على الأسر في الرياض إلى نحو 15%(opens in a new tab)
From across Omnia
More on Saudi Arabia, from Omnia.
Riyadh off-plan apartment prices, October 2026.
What 1,786 homes on Al Majdiah’s price lists say about off-plan apartment prices across Riyadh: the north-east gap, the bedroom medians and the schemes selling fastest.
Plot, built-up and internal area: reading a Saudi home plan.
Compare plot, gross floor, built-up and internal area using ROSHN Group and Mohammed Al Habib examples, including a worked price-per-metre calculation.
Moving to Riyadh with a family: schools, neighbourhoods and the first home.
A school’s campus and curriculum can narrow the housing search more effectively than a list of the city’s most popular districts. Here is how the choices connect.
Mohammed Al Habib residential portfolio atlas, 2026.
A source review of ten Mohammed Al Habib projects, with original capacity analysis, home-format comparisons and alternatives from the wider Riyadh and Jeddah market.
From the Omnia catalogue
From the Saudi Arabia catalogue
The Omnia Markets briefing
The markets, with our take, by email.
The stories that move these markets, and what they mean for a buyer, as they break.
