The Ministry of Housing plans to award all its residential unit projects in major cities to urban development companies so that construction can begin in accordance with the highest international standards. An official source at the ministry told *Al-Madina* that more than 20 urban development companies have purchased bidding documents from the Ministry of Housing to submit their proposals next month for the construction of 1,000 housing units as the first phase of its series of housing projects.
The ministry has also set November 23 as the date to verify that the submitted materials meet the minimum design standards and comply with the restrictions on the project’s basic phases as outlined in the framework agreement for real estate development companies, and on December 7, real estate development companies will be permitted to contact the first group of eligible applicants, while December 14 was set as the end of the marketing period for eligible applicants and the signing of real estate development agreements, and February 15 of next year was set as the date for the Ministry to hand over the land to real estate development companies pursuant to a handover report.
The Ministry is working on housing projects throughout the Kingdom, with work continuing on 62 projects currently under construction, totaling more than 73,000 housing units, while the Ministry has already taken delivery of 11 of these projects. It is also continuing to finalize 82 projects currently in the design phase, which will result in the construction of more than 131,000 housing units. Additionally, there are approximately 21 projects currently being tendered, with about 6 of them to be tendered in the Makkah region. The Ministry will announce the urban development companies selected to implement the Riyadh project (1) project on September 18, at which time the real estate development companies will prepare designs for the housing units, a description of the pricing methodology for these designs, a proposed payment schedule, materials, marketing plans, and the proposed maintenance program —known as the «Submitted Materials»—and submit them to the Ministry.