Cityscape Global 2025 Opens in the Saudi Capital**

Riyadh — BETH Press
17 November 2025

Under the patronage and in the presence of His Excellency Majid bin Abdullah Al-Hogail, Minister of Municipal, Rural Affairs and Housing, the Cityscape Global 2025 exhibition kicked off today in Riyadh under the theme:
“The Future of Urban Living”,
with wide participation from developers, investors, and experts from around the world.

Leadership Support: The Foundation of Saudi Arabia’s Urban Transformation

At the opening of the event, His Excellency expressed his deepest gratitude to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz, and to His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — may God preserve them — for their unwavering support to the municipal and real estate sectors.
This support, he noted, has positioned the Kingdom as a global model in urban development and as a key enabler of the national transformation under Vision 2030.

Cityscape… From an Exhibition to a Global Saudi Platform

Al-Hogail emphasized that Cityscape has become an international platform with a Saudi identity — reflecting the Kingdom’s architectural, urban, and economic progress — and offering investors exceptional opportunities to develop smart, human-centric cities.

Construction, Housing, and Finance: Unprecedented Figures

His Excellency highlighted key indicators:

Construction, building, and real estate activities contributed 13.8% of GDP by Q2 2025.

The sector accounts for 15.5% of total employment in the Kingdom.

The five major cities will need 1.5 million housing units by 2030 — including 731,000 units in Riyadh alone.

Agreements and real-estate deals signed in the first two days reached 161.2 billion SAR, a record that reflects the strength and vibrancy of the market.

Total real-estate financing for individuals and companies reached 961 billion SAR by Q2 2025.

Home-ownership among citizens exceeded 65% by the end of 2024.

A Modern Regulatory Environment Attracting Global Investors

Al-Hogail added that updated regulations — including foreign ownership rules — have strengthened international confidence in the Saudi market.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into construction and real estate represented 15.27% of total FDI in 2024.

The General Real Estate Authority is also developing three major indicators — price inflation, rental-yield ratio, and vacancy rates — to be launched in 2026, enabling investors to monitor market dynamics more accurately.

Real Estate Goes Digital: A New Phase

The Minister affirmed that the sector has entered the era of digital real estate, powered by:

PropTech solutions

Artificial intelligence

Modern building technologies

Augmented reality tools

Advanced project-management systems

He also revealed that the Kingdom has completed its first tokenized property title deed, now tradable among investors — in addition to launching the world’s first global standards for property tokenization, placing Saudi Arabia among the earliest nations to build a digital real-estate infrastructure directly linked to official registries.

Toward Smart Cities and a Global Real-Estate Economy

Al-Hogail concluded by stating that Cityscape has become a national real-estate season — a gathering point for developers and investors — united by a vision of a smart, sustainable urban future that reflects the Kingdom’s aspirations for a globally competitive real-estate economy built on innovation and efficiency.

BETH Press Commentary — Reading Beyond the Headlines

The indicators emerging from Cityscape 2025 reflect more than an active real-estate market…
They signal a nationwide wave of urban transformation driven by confidence, scale, and ambition:

Numbers that are bold in magnitude

A rapid pace of development

Unprecedented digitization of the real-estate ecosystem

A long-term vision aligning Saudi cities with global futures

Riyadh is not speaking about the future…
Riyadh is building it — now.