Saudi housing crisis tests Crown Prince’s reform drive
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s crown prince wants to build a mega-city with the latest robotics under his grand plan to reform the kingdom.
Civil servant Amer al-Ghamdi has a simpler dream: to buy an affordable home.
Whether Ghamdi and some 1.2 million Saudis in a similar financial position manage to do so will be vital if Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is to convince his people that the reform plan will benefit not just the superrich.
Ghamdi, 35, spends most of his US$2,670 (2,010 pounds) monthly wage paying back loans he took to get married and buy a car. He and his wife, Hanan, now have three children and struggle to save money.
Buying a home is out of the question. A 250-square metre (2,691 square feet) house in Saudi cities costs from 700,000 to 850,000 riyals (US$186,000 to US$226,000), said Ibrahim Albuloushi, head of US property consultant Jones Lang LaSalle in Saudi Arabia.
That is up to 10 times the annual salary for a low-income family in the Gulf Arab state.
“I tried to look for one of my relatives in Saudi to pay off my debts and give me a down payment to apply for a house at one of the commercial banks, but the interest will be very high and I am already paying a lot,” said Ghamdi, who lives in the capital Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, was once awash in petrodollars. This helped it provide a cradle-to-grave welfare system for its citizens with almost no taxation.
But a slump in oil prices has made fiscal discipline and diversification away from oil vital. Prince Mohammed’s Vision 2030 plan sets out to modernise the economy and reform the deeply conservative country, the birthplace of Islam.
The young prince, 32, has moved forcefully and rapidly where earlier leaders moved gradually and achieved moderate results. — Reuters