REGA leaves door open on more foreign-ownership zones, but won’t say when

REGA leaves door open to expanding Saudi foreign ownership zones: With the foreign ownership zones now live and applications flowing through the Saudi Properties platform, EnterpriseAM put four open questions to the Real Estate General Authority (REGA), the body responsible for implementing the law. The answers suggest the map is a starting point, not a finished product, and that REGA is being deliberately careful about what it commits to.

REMEMBER- The foreign property ownership law has been in force since 22 January, and the Cabinet filled in the last major blank on 23 June, publishing the full Geographic Zones Document that sets out exactly where non-Saudis can buy. The map gives Jeddah 57 designated zones, Riyadh nine, Al Ula 17, Makkah 12, and Madinah 10, the latter two restricted to Muslim buyers.

Riyadh’s nine zones aren’t necessarily final. When asked whether designating specific areas signals an intent to steer investment, and whether the zones could expand, REGA tells us the geographic scope is “a regulatory tool to guide real estate growth and align ownership [prospects] with cities’ development needs and growth capacity.” Implementation outcomes will be monitored within the existing governance framework, and any changes to the approved zones will be announced only once REGA’s own review and approval procedures are complete. In other words, expansion is on the table, but REGA isn’t attaching a timeline to it.

The Makkah and Madinah split comes down to regulatory status. Foreign individuals can only own property in the two holy cities if they're Muslim, a restriction REGA calls “explicit and binding statutory provisions” tied to each ownership category’s status under the law.

BUT- The same restriction doesn’t extend to companies: Saudi companies with foreign shareholders can still own property within the approved geographic scope, subject to separate regulatory controls, giving non-Muslim foreign investors a corporate route into the two cities that individuals don’t have. REGA’s role, it says, is limited to implementing the law and verifying compliance for each category, not interpreting or adjusting the underlying rules.

REGA isn’t reducing year one to a transaction count. The authority points to a mix of process and outcome measures that would define the law’s success in its first year: a “unified digital journey,” efficient procedures, protection of rights, and market attractiveness for investment and high-quality developments, alongside transaction volumes and investment activity. Operational, investment, and market indicators will be assessed together, REGA says, suggesting they want to be judged on how smoothly the system runs as much as on how many transactions it produces.

Saudi Properties won’t touch your mortgage. REGA was clear that its platform is built for ownership procedures, compliance verification, and integration with the Real Estate Registry, not financing. Real estate lending stays with the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and licensed financing institutions, and while REGA says platform guidance will be updated as new financing-related coordination is approved, it stressed that any such guidance “does not constitute a guarantee of financing or approval.” Buyers hunting for a mortgage will still need to go through a bank.

Why it matters: The zones document and REGA’s answers land alongside a broader push to reshape Saudi real estate, from the expanded white land tax to the Cabinet’s amendment opening government land to private developers and Riyadh’s own Tawazoun land-balance program. Foreign ownership is the piece aimed squarely at external capital, and REGA’s answers suggest the rollout will stay incremental: zones can grow, but only through the same review process that produced the current map, and only once REGA is satisfied the digital and compliance machinery behind it is working.