Saudi Arabia is “experiencing a housing and mortgage boom, reflecting a government drive to boost home ownership as part of efforts to shake up the oil kingdom’s economy and its ultraconservative society,” the Financial Times reports.
Saudi Arabia set a goal of 70 percent home ownership by 2030 as part of broader plans to transform the country economically and socially by 2030, and “it has risen to more than 60 percent, almost on a par with the US and the UK,” the report said, from around 47% in 2016.
Analysts say the Kingdom’s work on reforming mortgages and getting Saudis into home ownership “has been one of the more successful aspects” of Vision 2030.
“It’s one of the few objectives of Vision 2030 that’s on track and it is really a function of that they’ve managed to pump money into the system with the co-operation of the banks,” Tarek Fadlallah, chief executive of the Dubai-based Nomura Asset Management, told the Financial Times.
