A Saudi citizen faces several crises in his country, where billions are being squandered on entertainment parties, football players, and imaginary desert projects, despite all the reports we see and hear about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) projects, which make everyone believe that the life of the Saudi citizen has become better than any other citizen’ life.
Housing is the most serious crisis that Saudi citizens and residents of the Kingdom are currently facing. They are particularly affected by the increase in housing costs due to a number of factors, such as the high cost of land, the high value of building materials, and the government’s growing expropriation of private homes and lands. Along with the Saudi authorities halting some plans in major cities like Riyadh and Jeddah, which resulted in a land crisis that fueled an increase in housing prices, the state feels it has the right to take these spaces for projects that it claims are national projects. All of this is on top of the state’s demolition projects, which are executed without considering entire neighborhoods and forcing their inhabitants to evacuate.
The lengthy wait times on real estate loan application lists and the rise in interest rates on bank housing loans also contributed to the housing crisis that Saudi citizen was experiencing.
Ministry of Housing response
The Ministry of Housing, for its part, has frequently discussed the historical and contemporary problems that citizens face when it comes to purchasing land or renting a home, particularly for the younger generation. The Ministry stated that the incapacity of Saudi Arabian citizens to purchase at prices that reflect present or future market conditions is a key component of the country’s housing crisis. The Ministry said it is seeking to increase the percentage of Saudi citizens who own homes in the near future by developing new citizen-focused programs.
It is important to remember that the Ministry of Housing has previously stated in 2018 that it was implementing the Saudi Crown Prince’s 2017 recommendation regarding new financing initiatives for the benefit of the populace. The residents were then shocked to learn that the state had promised to lower the down payment required to purchase a home to 15% in an effort to lessen the financial burden on the public. However, the promise has not been kept to this day, despite the Council of Ministers announcing that it had approved the Ministry of Housing to implement a real estate financing program known as the “soft mortgage” for participants in the Ministry of Housing programs, which includes lowering the down payment from 30% to 15%.
Despite the spaces he set aside in Vision 2030 to address the housing crisis and construct new, opulent housing fit for Saudi citizens, who are thought to be among the richest people in the world, the country has not shown any signs of hope from MBS’s bright promises to resolve the housing crisis after eight years of his effective ruling following the absence of his father due to illness and old age.
Today’s citizen hears, not sees, billions being poured into the desert to build skyscraper concrete structures that neither the local nor the visitor will benefit from. Then, given the MBS government’s failure to address their housing issues, where should more than 80 percent of the Kingdom’s population, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund, go?
