Should I buy near the new Casablanca RER?

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Is the new Casablanca RER actually happening?

The Casablanca RER is now far enough into execution that we would treat it as real infrastructure rather than a project buyers are being asked to believe in.

The strongest recent development came in late August 2026. ONCF definitively awarded Gidna SARL the two contracts covering nine new RER stations for a combined 470.7 million MAD before tax. The stations are Mohammedia Facultés, Zenata Industrielle, Sidi Bernoussi, Aïn Sebaâ, Hay Mohammadi, Mers Sultan, Casa Oasis, Sidi Maârouf and Nouaceur Nouvelle Ville. Construction is planned over roughly 18 months.

That award is more meaningful than another announcement. ONCF had put the same contracts to tender earlier in the summer with an estimated value of 400 million MAD. Contractors have now been selected, prices fixed and the station program has moved another step toward construction.

The stations sit inside a much larger metropolitan rail program already under way around Casablanca. Current plans call for three RER lines, about 92 kilometers of network, 18 stations and capacity for as many as 180,000 passenger trips a day by 2030.

Rolling stock is being prepared too. ONCF selected Hyundai Rotem as part of its wider purchase of 168 new trains, with the Casablanca metropolitan network expected to receive high-capacity trains capable of carrying more than 1,000 passengers.

So we can be much more confident about the RER itself today than we could have been a year or two ago. What remains uncertain is how much each station will actually change the value of the surrounding housing.

What has happened	Current status	Scale	What we learn from it
Nine new RER stations	Contracts definitively awarded	470.7m MAD	Station program has moved beyond tendering
Station construction	Planned	About 18 months	Physical delivery is getting closer
Casablanca RER	Planned network	3 lines, 92 km, 18 stations	This is a metropolitan network rather than one commuter line
RER demand	ONCF target	Up to 180,000 trips/day	Usage could be large enough to affect housing choices
New trains	Procurement committed	High-capacity trainsets	The service has dedicated rolling-stock investment behind it

Will the Casablanca RER actually make commuting much easier?

Yes. In several parts of Greater Casablanca, the new RER should turn rail from an occasional transport option into something people can realistically use every day.

Frequency is the big change.

The current Casa Port–Mohammed V Airport service generally runs about once an hour. It stops at Casa Voyageurs, Casa Oasis and Bouskoura before reaching the airport. Current RER planning points toward trains as often as every 7.5 minutes on the busiest common section around Casablanca and Nouaceur, while the airport service is expected around every 15 minutes.

Moving from one train per hour to four or eight opportunities per hour completely changes how people use a railway. Missing an hourly train can wreck a commute. Missing a train when another comes eight or fifteen minutes later hardly matters.

The improvement will also vary dramatically by neighborhood.

Casa Oasis already has a station, so residents mainly gain frequency and better connections. Bouskoura also already sits on the airport railway.

Sidi Maârouf is much more interesting. A new station would give a major employment area a rail connection it currently lacks. Nouaceur Nouvelle Ville could see an even bigger shift because metropolitan rail would bring a peripheral development much closer, in practical commuting terms, to Casablanca.

That difference is central to our investment view. We care most about places where the RER changes how easy it is to live there, rather than places where it simply makes an already convenient location slightly better.

Area	What residents have today	What the RER changes	Size of the accessibility gain
Casa Oasis	Existing rail station	Far more frequent service	Moderate
Bouskoura	Existing airport-train station	Far more frequent service	Moderate to strong
Sidi Maârouf	Major road-dependent employment area	New rail station	Strong
Nouaceur Nouvelle Ville	Peripheral developing area	Direct metropolitan rail	Very strong
Zenata	Large developing new city	Better direct Casablanca access	Strong
Central Casablanca	Already many transport options	Better network connectivity	Smaller

Does buying near a Casablanca RER station automatically make sense?

No. A Casablanca apartment near the future RER can still be a terrible investment if the property is overpriced, badly built or inconveniently located relative to the station.

The railway story makes it very easy to overpay.

A developer can put a station on a sales brochure, describe a project as “minutes from the RER” and immediately ask buyers to pay for future accessibility that does not exist yet.

We would start with today's property value. Compare the apartment with similar properties in the neighborhood, look at current rents, inspect the building and calculate what the property is worth without assuming any RER appreciation.

Then look at the railway upside.

If two comparable apartments should both be worth around 1 million MAD today but the seller beside the future station wants 1.15 million MAD because the RER is coming, the buyer has already handed the seller a 15% infrastructure premium.

Even if rail later lifts local values by around 15%, there may be little gain left.

The better setup is much simpler: buy at something close to today's neighborhood price and get the improved transport later.

Are Casablanca property prices already jumping because of the RER?

No. Casablanca property prices have not entered anything resembling a broad RER boom, which is good news for buyers looking before the transport upgrade is fully priced in.

The wider Casablanca market has actually been uneven lately.

Bank Al-Maghrib and ANCFCC recorded a difficult first quarter of 2026 in Casablanca. The city's property-price index fell around 2.7% from the previous quarter, residential prices declined about 3%, and transaction activity dropped much more sharply.

The national market then improved during the second quarter. Bank Al-Maghrib and ANCFCC reported property prices up around 0.7% quarter over quarter nationally, while transactions increased approximately 11%. Residential transactions rose around 6.3%.

That tells us something useful. Huge transport projects are progressing at the same time as the housing market remains selective rather than euphoric.

We therefore still have a chance to find station-area properties where sellers have not fully priced the RER into the apartment.

But we should not confuse that with saying Casablanca is cheap everywhere. Prime districts already command very high prices, and some developers around future infrastructure are perfectly capable of charging tomorrow's price today.

Which Casablanca RER areas are still cheap enough to be interesting?

Sidi Maârouf, parts of eastern Casablanca and selected Bouskoura properties currently give us much more room for RER-driven upside than expensive areas such as Oasis, Anfa or Casablanca Finance City.

The price gaps across Casablanca are enormous.

Prime western areas commonly exceed 20,000 MAD per m². Newer or particularly desirable properties in Anfa and similar locations can go far beyond that.

Sidi Maârouf often sits closer to roughly 8,000–14,000 MAD per m² depending on the building and exact location. Bouskoura apartments commonly fall around 9,000–13,000 MAD per m², although premium projects can be substantially more expensive.

Aïn Sebaâ, Sidi Bernoussi and some other eastern neighborhoods can still be found in the high-four-figure to low-five-figure range per square meter.

Mers Sultan is more established and central, so prices are already higher. Current large listing databases put the neighborhood around the mid-14,000 MAD/m² range on average.

The arithmetic gets interesting quickly. A 90 m² apartment at 10,000 MAD/m² costs about 900,000 MAD. At 20,000 MAD/m², the same surface costs 1.8 million MAD.

A cheaper neighborhood therefore does not have to turn into Casablanca's next premium district to generate a strong percentage gain. Even partial closing of that price gap can move the investment considerably.

Area	Rough apartment-price range	Current market position	How interesting is the RER angle?
Anfa / premium west	20,000–35,000+ MAD/m²	Prime	Low
Casablanca Finance City	~19,000–28,000+ MAD/m²	Premium	Low to moderate
Oasis	Mostly mid-teens to 20,000+ MAD/m²	Established	Moderate
Sidi Maârouf	~8,000–14,000 MAD/m²	Employment-led district	Strong
Bouskoura	~9,000–13,000 MAD/m²	Growing suburban market	Strong if close to rail
Eastern Casablanca	Often ~8,000–11,000 MAD/m²	Cheaper and uneven	Potentially strong
Zenata	Highly project-specific	New-city market	High upside, higher risk

Is Sidi Maârouf the best place to buy near the Casablanca RER?

Sidi Maârouf is currently our strongest risk-adjusted RER bet because the neighborhood already has jobs, relatively affordable apartments and a real transport problem for the railway to solve.

That combination is unusually good.

Casanearshore alone has made Sidi Maârouf one of Casablanca's major office and outsourcing hubs. Technopark and numerous corporate campuses add more daily employment nearby. Thousands of people already need to reach this part of the city.

A new RER station can therefore serve demand that exists before the station opens.

That gives Sidi Maârouf an advantage over developments where investors have to hope the jobs, shops and residents will eventually follow the transport infrastructure.

Apartment prices also remain well below Casablanca's premium west. Depending on the project and micro-location, current market benchmarks commonly fall around 8,000–14,000 MAD/m².

Rental returns can be attractive too. Current listing-based market estimates often put gross apartment yields in the neighborhood somewhere around 6%–8%, depending on unit size and purchase price.

We would still be very strict about location. Sidi Maârouf is large, and the district name alone is almost meaningless for an RER strategy. A seven-minute walk to the station is valuable. A project that requires another taxi ride after getting off the train gives us far less.

For now, Sidi Maârouf offers the cleanest combination of existing employment and future accessibility we found along the new network.

Is Bouskoura still worth buying if trains already stop there?

Yes, but Bouskoura is a frequency bet rather than a brand-new rail-access bet.

Bouskoura already sits on the current Casablanca–Mohammed V Airport railway. That means residents are not going from zero trains to trains.

What could change is whether the railway becomes convenient enough to use without checking a timetable first.

Current service is roughly hourly. The future metropolitan network is designed around much shorter intervals on the Casablanca–Nouaceur corridor. If that happens, Bouskoura starts functioning much more like an outer urban neighborhood connected by rapid transit.

Current apartment prices, commonly around 9,000–13,000 MAD/m², still leave room below Casablanca's prime districts. Rental yields around 6%–7% are also plausible for well-bought apartments.

The main trap is obvious once we look at a map. Bouskoura covers a huge area.

Many Green City developments and villa compounds are several kilometers from the railway. People living there may continue driving even after RER frequencies improve.

So we would focus heavily on apartments from which residents can realistically reach the station on foot. Paying an RER premium for a property ten minutes away by car makes little sense.

Could Nouaceur make more money than Sidi Maârouf?

Nouaceur could deliver more upside than Sidi Maârouf, but we would accept much more execution and housing-supply risk to get it.

The reason we like Nouaceur is that several large investments are happening in the same place.

The future Nouaceur Nouvelle Ville station brings the area into the RER network. Nearby, Mohammed V Airport is undergoing a huge expansion. ONDA has begun developing a new terminal designed to add 20 million passengers of annual capacity and take the airport toward roughly 35 million passengers a year.

That project is still moving forward today. ONDA has continued launching major tenders connected with the new terminal and its supporting infrastructure.

Nouaceur's employment base is expanding at the same time.

The MidParc aerospace zone already concentrates a large share of Morocco's aviation industry. Safran is now building a major new aircraft-engine complex there. One facility will handle maintenance for as many as 150 engines a year and is expected to create about 600 jobs by 2030. Another €200 million plant will assemble as many as 350 LEAP-1A engines annually and create roughly 300 jobs.

Safran's own latest results make that investment more than a distant industrial promise. In the first half of 2026, Safran delivered 1,030 LEAP engines, up 41% year over year, and raised its full-year outlook. Nouaceur is being integrated into a production program that is itself growing fast.

Put the pieces together and the area gets an airport expanding toward 35 million passengers, a growing aerospace cluster and a high-frequency rail connection to Casablanca.

Housing supply is the catch. Nouaceur has far more room to build than Sidi Maârouf. Developers can respond to stronger demand by adding apartments, which can hold back both rents and resale prices.

For buyers prepared to wait, Nouaceur may have the larger transformation ahead of it. Sidi Maârouf remains easier to underwrite today.

What is changing in Nouaceur?	Scale	Why housing could benefit	What could go wrong?
RER connection	New metropolitan station	Much easier Casablanca commute	Delays or weaker-than-planned service
Mohammed V Airport	Capacity targeted around 35m passengers/year	Larger airport employment ecosystem	Employees can still live elsewhere
Safran MRO plant	~€120m, ~600 jobs planned	More skilled employment	Small relative to total housing market
Safran LEAP assembly	~€200m, ~300 jobs	Additional industrial demand	Housing supply can expand
Developable land	Large	Cheaper entry prices	New supply can limit appreciation

Is Zenata the biggest long-term RER opportunity?

Zenata probably offers one of the largest long-term transformations along the Casablanca RER, but buying there means betting on an entire new city rather than simply betting on a station.

Zenata is huge.

The broader development covers roughly 1,860 hectares and is planned for around 300,000 residents and 100,000 jobs over time. Investment in the wider project has been estimated around 21 billion MAD, with a large share of the land reserved for green areas and public facilities.

Rail strengthens the project because Zenata sits between Casablanca and Mohammedia. Frequent trains could make living there considerably more practical for Casablanca workers.

The risk comes from exactly what makes Zenata exciting: scale.

An established neighborhood may have little room left for construction. Zenata can keep adding homes for years. When demand rises, developers can respond with more apartments instead of forcing buyers to fight over a fixed stock of existing housing.

We therefore prefer neighborhoods there that have already started functioning in real life. Shops, schools, public space, completed buildings and easy access to the future station tell us much more than a masterplan.

Zenata could outperform strongly if the whole city-development project works. That makes it a higher-conviction bet on urban development than a simple transport investment.

Is Casa Oasis already too expensive for an RER investment?

Casa Oasis is currently a good place to own property but a weaker place to speculate on the RER because the neighborhood already enjoys strong connectivity.

Casa Oasis has an operating railway station today, including service toward Mohammed V Airport. The future RER should make trains far more frequent and improve connections across the metropolitan area.

That is valuable, but Oasis starts from a much higher base than Sidi Maârouf or Nouaceur.

Many current apartments already trade around the high teens or above 20,000 MAD/m², depending on building quality, age and exact location. Buyers are already paying for a central residential neighborhood with good access to the rest of Casablanca.

If we buy in Oasis, we would mainly want the property for Oasis itself: tenant demand, location, resale liquidity and neighborhood quality.

The RER can make that investment better. We just would not pay a large extra premium today because of it.

How close should I actually buy to a Casablanca RER station?

For a Casablanca RER investment, we would rather buy a good apartment seven minutes from the station than an average apartment beside the tracks or another one fifteen minutes away behind difficult roads.

Walking convenience matters more than the district label.

Agents will inevitably stretch the meaning of “near the RER.” A property 1.5 kilometers away can look close on a sales map while requiring twenty minutes of walking, major road crossings or a taxi ride.

We would usually start by looking inside roughly a five-to-ten-minute walking radius and then physically test the route.

Pedestrian conditions matter enormously around Sidi Maârouf, Bouskoura and industrial eastern Casablanca. Two properties 700 meters from the same station can have completely different accessibility if one has a direct sidewalk and the other sits behind a motorway interchange.

Being directly on top of the station is not automatically best either. Train noise, traffic, taxis and passenger drop-off activity can hurt residential quality.

The sweet spot will often be a few streets away: genuinely walkable but removed from the worst station noise.

This is also where we would allow ourselves to pay a small premium. We would pay more for demonstrably better access today, while avoiding the large speculative premiums that assume future appreciation has already happened.

Will the Casablanca RER push rents up?

The Casablanca RER should support rents around stations where commuters get a genuinely easier trip, although areas with lots of new construction may see developers absorb part of that demand through additional supply.

Sidi Maârouf has the clearest rental case.

Jobs are already concentrated there, and current apartment yields can reach the mid-to-high single digits when the property is bought well. Better rail access increases the number of people who can realistically live nearby without relying entirely on a car.

Bouskoura should also benefit, particularly close to the existing station. The improvement there comes from frequency rather than first-time rail access.

Nouaceur could see a much bigger demand shift as airport employment, aerospace investment and RER connectivity grow together. But Nouaceur can also build a lot of housing.

That is why we would never buy near the RER using a spreadsheet that requires future rent increases to make the numbers work.

A property that already produces an acceptable rental return today gives us much more protection. Any RER-driven rental growth then improves an investment that already works.

Should I buy an off-plan apartment near the Casablanca RER?

We would only buy off-plan near the Casablanca RER when the price is close enough to completed local property that we are genuinely being compensated for construction risk.

Off-plan marketing can make these areas look almost impossible to lose money on.

One brochure can combine the RER, airport expansion, World Cup infrastructure, new business districts and future neighborhood development. The projects behind those claims may genuinely exist. The apartment can still be overpriced.

Imagine completed apartments around a future station selling for 10,000 MAD/m² while a new development launches at 14,000 MAD/m². The developer is asking the buyer to pay a 40% premium before the new apartment or the RER has been delivered.

That is difficult to justify purely with better transport.

The issue becomes even more important in Bouskoura, Nouaceur and Zenata because all three have room for substantial new residential supply.

We would be much more comfortable paying close to today's local market value for a completed or nearly completed apartment and keeping the infrastructure improvement for ourselves.

What could make a Casablanca RER investment go wrong?

The biggest danger today is overpaying for the right infrastructure story.

The likelihood that Casablanca gets major new metropolitan rail has fallen sharply as a risk. As seen above, the nine-station contracts have now been awarded, the wider rail program is moving and rolling stock is committed.

Timing can still slip. A buyer needs enough holding power to tolerate construction delays without being forced to sell.

Oversupply is a much bigger concern in Nouaceur, Bouskoura and Zenata. Strong demand does not guarantee rapidly rising prices if developers can release thousands of additional homes.

Micro-location can also ruin the thesis. “Near Sidi Maârouf station” tells us very little until we know whether a tenant can actually walk from the building to the platform.

The wrong apartment type creates another problem. Small and mid-sized apartments aimed at commuters may capture the RER effect much more directly than expensive large units bought for residents who will continue driving.

Liquidity matters too. Casablanca experienced a sharp transaction slowdown earlier in 2026. Infrastructure does not make a mediocre apartment instantly easy to resell.

We would therefore reject any property whose numbers only work if the RER produces rapid appreciation.

Where would we actually buy near the Casablanca RER now?

We would currently put Sidi Maârouf first, followed by genuinely walkable Bouskoura properties and carefully selected lower-priced opportunities around the eastern RER corridor; Nouaceur is our preferred higher-risk growth bet.

Sidi Maârouf has the cleanest setup. Large employment centers already operate there, apartment prices remain well below prime Casablanca and the railway adds a form of transport the area does not currently have.

Bouskoura comes next, although we would stay very close to the railway. The existing station removes some speculative risk because we already know where the transport node is. Much higher frequency could make that station dramatically more useful.

Aïn Sebaâ, Sidi Bernoussi and Hay Mohammadi deserve more attention than they usually get from foreign property buyers. Entry prices remain much lower than western Casablanca, while new stations can improve access to areas that already contain large populations and employment bases. Building quality varies enormously, so these are street-by-street rather than district-wide bets.

Nouaceur has the strongest growth story. The RER, airport expansion and aerospace cluster are all progressing at the same time. We would demand a lower purchase price because the area can produce plenty of new housing.

Zenata sits farther out on the risk curve. The RER helps a very large new-city project, but the investment succeeds best if Zenata itself matures into the major urban center planners expect.

Casa Oasis ranks lower specifically for an RER strategy. It remains one of the stronger places here from a pure residential-quality perspective, but its higher price and existing railway access leave less room for a dramatic accessibility re-rating.

Area	How much does the RER change accessibility?	Existing housing demand	Supply risk	Our view today
Sidi Maârouf	High	Strong	Moderate	Best overall RER buy
Bouskoura near station	Medium-high	Established	High	Strong if genuinely walkable
Aïn Sebaâ / Sidi Bernoussi	High in selected pockets	Established	Moderate	Interesting value play
Hay Mohammadi	High	Strong urban demand	Moderate	Very micro-location dependent
Nouaceur	Very high	Growing	High	Best higher-risk growth bet
Zenata	High	Still developing	Very high	Long-term speculative bet
Casa Oasis	Moderate	Strong	Lower	Good property market, weaker RER trade

Should I buy near the new Casablanca RER?

Yes. We would buy near the new Casablanca RER now, but only in the few locations where the railway creates a major accessibility improvement and the seller has not already charged us for it.

The latest developments have made the infrastructure case considerably stronger. Nine additional stations have moved from tendering to awarded construction contracts, the wider metropolitan railway program is progressing and Casablanca is building the trains and supporting infrastructure needed for a real high-frequency network.

Sidi Maârouf is currently our favorite location because the logic already works before the RER opens. Jobs are there, housing remains relatively affordable and renters already have a reason to live nearby.

Bouskoura works when the apartment is genuinely close to the station. Nouaceur offers more upside if we are comfortable waiting and accepting heavier development risk. Selected parts of Aïn Sebaâ, Sidi Bernoussi and Hay Mohammadi may produce surprisingly good value because current prices are still low relative to western Casablanca.

We would be much less excited about paying a large RER premium in Oasis or buying an expensive off-plan apartment simply because a developer has put the future network on its brochure.

The price discipline is simple. We want an apartment that makes sense at today's rent and today's neighborhood value, preferably within an easy walk of a confirmed station.

If the property already works before the first high-frequency RER train arrives, the railway can create real upside. If we need the RER to rescue an overpriced purchase, we have probably bought the wrong apartment.

Who is the author of this content?

SANDS OF WEALTH

A team specialized in real estate investing in MENA countries (Morocco, UAE, Oman, etc.)

We are a team of financial experts, legal professionals, developers, and local real estate specialists dedicated to helping people like you avoid mistakes when investing in real estate in a foreign place, particularly in Casablanca. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.