The Real Estate Dialectic. For how long?
Bakr Al-Murshidi
Lately, we have been hearing a lot about the rise in real estate prices significantly, as it has become the talk of the community, topping the topics of social media and other forums of all spectrums of society. If you listen carefully, you will find that all or most of these conversations in the councils are about real estate, as well as the rise in rents, which is the center of the topics of discussion in a remarkable way that caused a great stir due to the level of discussions and deliberations.
Lately, we have been hearing a lot about the real estate sector. The real estate sector is one of the most controversial sectors in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, and it is one of the safest and most stable sectors; in terms of preserving and managing money, and it is a conversation that fades once and then floats to the surface and is renewed and does not stop since ancient times.
The demand to buy a property - residential, for example - is controlled by several factors, the most important of which is the number of family members, and this is noticeable all over the world, which means smaller and more numerous housing, and the improvement of the standard of life in the countryside, which reduces the volume of migration to cities, and as for commercial real estate, for example, selling via the Internet, working remotely and others all affect the demand for commercial real estate.
Some segments of our society have started to own white land in the outskirts of the cities in which they live, because they are aware of the advantages of that area and the quality of real estate in it, or because their financial ability is not enough to buy a piece of land that does not exceed (250 m) in the city center, and even some of them buy outside the Kingdom to seek profits in order to take advantage of opportunities and they are a minority, these factors may be peripheral but their impact is clear in owning a property or not.
Whether or not If we know that residential real estate activity in Riyadh has increased significantly from the beginning of 2021 until now, which is illogical, especially since land prices have been stable at a certain price for long periods, and many people have moved to neighboring regions, or to other cities whose signs of progress and renaissance are beginning to appear on the horizon, it is more logical that this will ease the pressure on the city of Riyadh.
Real estate professionals, for example, attribute the reasons for the rise in prices to the gap between supply and demand by reducing or increasing it, as well as facilitating the pumping of residential mortgage loans, two important factors in raising prices, in addition to that most of the current generation prefers to have an elegant single house that exempts them from rents and secures the future of their children, and the multiple factors that affect real estate prices are many.
For their part, the state - the government - is not the only one. The state, may God protect it, spares no effort in pumping money, preparing roads between cities, with infrastructure available wherever you go, houses of expertise supported here and there, and creating the necessary information that guides young people to build or own a home, and those housing units that are delivered to beneficiaries of different financial levels and types in many cities, and this helps reduce prices.
Despite this, most of the current generation prefers to have an elegant and individual home that saves them from rents and secures the future of their children, and the multiple factors that affect real estate prices are many. <Nevertheless, we wonder how long real estate prices will remain in the sky.
