A stack of residency incentives is turning Sultan Haitham City into the GCC’s most accessible foreign-buyer real estate market

Oman’s real estate sales surged 22.7% y-o-y in 2Q 2026 to OMR 316.9 mn, with one project doing most of the heavy lifting, directly and indirectly. Sultan Haitham City, the national flagship smart-city development in Al Maabela backed by the Housing and Urban Planning Ministry, has become the center of gravity for both domestic land buyers and a growing wave of foreign investors drawn by project-specific incentives and a residency-on-purchase model that is turning the Omani market into one of the most competitive for foreigners among its GCC peers, according to NCSI data and market participants.

Residential land dominated the quarter, accounting for 62% of the sector’s transaction value and 84% by number of deals. Prices on the national residential index hit 130.2 — up nearly 30% from the 2018 base and marking the seventh consecutive quarterly increase. Muscat alone saw residential transaction values jump roughly 41% y-o-y, with brokers reporting price spillover into neighboring areas like Al Mawaleh and Al Khoudh as buyers snap up plots adjacent to Sultan Haitham City. The government’s announcement of additional freehold projects across Muscat and, recently, other governorates is accelerating land transactions, Asad Siddiqi, an investment advisor at Maysan Properties, tells EnterpriseAM.

The project’s draw for foreign buyers is driven by a stack of policy incentives that have been accruing for some time. Under a September 2025 cabinet decision, Sultan Haitham City purchasers can secure residency for themselves and their families after paying just 30% of any property priced at a minimum of OMR 50k, and even before construction completes. That’s generous compared to integrated tourism complexes (ITC) outside the city, which generally require 40-50% payment first, a finished unit, and a minimum price of OMR 200k. A separate Royal Oman Police Decision (No. 87/2026), effective 22 June 2026, introduced a sponsor-free Owner Visa option that extends eligibility even to properties that are not yet registered.

SOUND SMART- ITCs are projects designated by the government as open for foreign ownership. Buy inside one, and you get freehold ownership plus residency. While Sultan Haitham City is a mega urban development project, it itself isn’t an ITC, but many projects within have the designation, such as Hayy Al Wafa, Yenaier Residence, Wadi Zaha, Jood, and Sarooj Oasis. You can learn more about ITCs in our July deep dive into GCC’s race to court foreign investments in real estate.

Oman’s lower cost of living relative to Dubai and Saudi Arabia is also helping, attracting a wave of studio buyers from Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, and Palestine — many purchasing primarily to lock in residency, Ubaid Safi, a Muscat-based real estate broker, told EnterpriseAM. That stands in contrast to other major ITCs, such as Al Mouj Muscat, Muscat Hills, and Muscat Bay, that require units costing a minimum of OMR 200k, blocking off the cheaper studio route in these developments for foreigners.

That’s why prices inside Sultan Haitham City have moved fast. Al Abrar Real Estate’s Hayy Al Wafa, the first project to launch in the city, started with brochure prices from OMR 27.8k in 2023–2024; these units now sell at OMR 70k and above, and that’s if they are even available via resale, Safi tells us. Al Ahly Sabbour’s Wadi Zaha and Al Adrak Group’s Yenaier, which both launched in January 2025, had the studios at OMR 46k. These are now priced at OMR 70k and above in the August 2026 brochure, Safi adds.

Two Egyptian mega-developers — Talaat Moustafa Group and Al Ahly Sabbour — are emerging as the dominant players there, acquiring what brokers told us are Sultan Haitham City’s most premium plots around a Central Park-style green spine. Al Ahly Sabbour’s first phase in Wadi Zaha sold out in 1Q, Safi tells us. No major Emirati developer — Emaar, Aldar, Damac — has entered the city yet, a striking gap given the UAE’s geographic proximity.

REMEMBER- The 2Q figures are in line with a general trend, but they are still a step up from last quarter. We previously reported that Oman’s 1Q transaction values were up 18.4% y-o-y to OMR 678 mn, with Muscat residential land prices up 43.6% and foreign investment rising roughly 40%. IRES & D founder Ismail Kamel tells us the Sultanate’s pitch centers on stability and value, drawing parallels to where Dubai stood 15-20 years ago: “Returns on investment today are much higher than in any other place you go to as a developer.”

Beyond Muscat, the gains are uneven. South Batinah posted the biggest residential land increase in transaction value outside the capital in 2Q at 18.9% y-o-y. Meanwhile, Al Wusta Governorate saw residential land transaction value fall by 16%.

The dynamics behind South Batinah numbers are similar to Muscat: Part of the driver is the opening of foreign ownership in Hayy Al Naseem, a government housing project in the Barka area co-developed with Adrak Developers that was initially designed for Omani buyers on the ministry’s waitlist. The project gets the same incentive of residency after a 30% payment that Sultan Haitham City is getting, Safi explains. The broader Barka area has benefited from OMR 150 mn in government housing contracts awarded in January 2023, waterfront developments in Barka and Musannah, and an investment forum held there in April 2026, in addition to its proximity to Muscat’s metropolitan edge.

The non-residential segment tells a different story. While the sector’s total transaction value rose 12.4% on the back of commercial land (covering commercial and industrial), shop transaction values fell 12% y-o-y and industrial land slipped 3.9%. Safi attributes the divergence partly to a legacy of local developer failures on commercially-focused projects — some developers collected buyer funds and left projects unfinished, eroding trust in built commercial property and pushing capital toward land.

The government tried to address this: The Omani government mandated escrow accounts for these projects in its 2025 overhaul of its comprehensive real estate regulation that came into force on 10 March 2026.

For industrial properties, the drivers are different. “The sector is already saturated and performing well, Siddiqi tells us, meaning the slowdown in transaction data reflects limited available inventory rather than weak demand. This slowdown is stark as it comes amid what should have been rising demand from GCC players for warehouse spaces as Oman emerged as a transit hub around Hormuz closure.

The war is also playing a part by reshaping the GCC foreign buyer map. Property sales in Oman from the start of the war at the end of February through early April rose by roughly a third to USD 550 mn, mainly due to increased interest from UAE-based investors, AGBI reported earlier this year. About a third of total transactions in March came from UAE buyers, up from an average of 12% per month in 2025. The buyers were a mix of Emiratis and UAE-based expatriates, mainly from Dubai, brokers say.

Iranians and Pakistanis are increasingly becoming a big part of this exodus from the UAE to the Oman properties market, amid what Safi described as “psychological fear” over their visa status and asset safety. “Before, Pakistani investors were largely unfamiliar with Omani real estate; those with capital went directly to Dubai or Qatar. But when [the] conflict began, people wanted to reallocate, including Iranian investors,” Safi adds.

But be wary of comparing UAE and Oman on the same terms: Dubai recorded 34.8k residential transactions worth USD 23.1 bn in 2Q 2026 alone, according to UAE-based brokerage and real estate consultant Betterhomes data. That’s almost 28 times the size of the Omani real estate market, residential and commercial combined, which totaled OMR 316.9 mn (c. USD 823 mn) in the same quarter.

That gap, paradoxically, is the bull case for Oman’s market, with analysts and brokers who spoke to us throughout the summer viewing the Sultanate as similar to where Dubai stood in the mid-1990s — it means Oman’s percentage gains are moving off a very small base, and a handful of large projects or policy changes, as we explain in this story, can swing the national data in ways that would barely register in a market of Dubai’s depth and maturity.