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SUMMARY
No. Foreigners can buy across a much wider part of Muscat than they could a few years ago, but most non-GCC buyers still cannot choose any apartment, villa or plot in the capital and assume it can be registered in their name.
The biggest change is not a single citywide liberalization law. It is the steady spread of approved foreign-ownership routes into more mainstream parts of Muscat, from established ITCs such as Al Mouj to Sultan Haitham City and new projects such as Telal Al Qurum.
That distinction is easy to miss because a foreign-freehold project can sit inside an ordinary district without changing the legal status of the surrounding properties. A qualifying development in Qurum, Bausher or Seeb does not automatically make the whole neighborhood foreign freehold.
Nationality still matters. GCC citizens have a broader ownership route than most other foreigners, so two buyers looking at the same property may face different legal options even if both are described loosely as “foreign buyers.”
The type of right matters too. Freehold ownership, a registered usufruct lasting up to 99 years and an ordinary tenancy can all give someone long-term use of a home, but they are not economically the same asset and should not be valued as if they were.
Sultan Haitham City is probably the clearest sign that Muscat’s foreign-buyer market is becoming mainstream rather than purely resort-oriented. The city is planned around 20,000 homes and roughly 100,000 residents, yet project-level rules still matter because not every phase is necessarily open on identical terms.
Oman’s new real-estate and registry laws make the market more formal and easier to document, especially for off-plan property, but they do not amount to blanket permission for every non-Omani to buy every Muscat property.
Golden Residency adds another layer of confusion. Current official pages describe the real-estate privilege with different degrees of breadth, so an ordinary Muscat purchase outside a clearly approved route still deserves written eligibility confirmation before a buyer relies on it.
The foreign-accessible market is nevertheless getting much bigger. New ITCs, future-city developments and a national tourism-complex pipeline worth billions of rials mean that the practical choice set for international buyers is expanding quickly even while the legal boundaries remain.
The safest way to approach Muscat is property first, headline second: verify the exact unit, the exact ownership regime and the exact buyer category before paying a deposit. “Freehold in Muscat” is useful marketing language, but the registry right attached to the specific property is what ultimately matters.
So the market is opening fast, but not in the simple Dubai-style sense that every residential address has become equally accessible. Muscat is better described today as a rapidly expanding foreign-buyer market built around approved projects and specific legal routes.
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Can foreigners really buy anywhere in Muscat now?
Can foreigners really buy anywhere in Muscat now?
No. Foreigners have many more ways to buy property in Muscat today, but most non-GCC buyers still cannot simply choose any apartment, villa or plot in the capital and register it in their name.
The confusion is understandable because Oman has changed several parts of its property system at once. Royal Decree 79/2025 introduced a new Real Estate Regulation Law. Royal Decree 56/2026 then replaced the old real estate registry system. Large new communities such as Sultan Haitham City are being developed, more Integrated Tourism Complexes are appearing inside Muscat, and the government is actively courting foreign property investors.
The physical map of foreign-buyable Muscat is expanding as a result.
A good recent example is Telal Al Qurum. The Ministry of Heritage and Tourism signed the agreement for this new Integrated Tourism Complex in Bausher in March 2026. The project covers roughly 165,000 square metres, carries an estimated investment of OMR230 million and includes residential units available for freehold ownership. This is Qurum, deep inside metropolitan Muscat, rather than a remote resort destination.
Yet Oman's underlying ownership system still depends heavily on who the buyer is, where the property sits and what legal regime covers the project.
The government continues to operate a specific service for ownership inside tourist complexes. It runs a separate general ownership service for GCC citizens. Oman also maintains statutory restrictions on non-Omani ownership in particular locations and on agricultural property.
So the market is opening fast, but “foreigners can buy anywhere in Muscat” goes much further than the current rules support.
| Muscat property | Can a non-GCC foreigner assume they can buy it? | Likely route | What needs checking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approved ITC unit | Yes, generally | Registered ownership | Exact unit and project approval |
| New freehold ITC such as Telal Al Qurum | Yes, where released as foreign freehold | Registered ownership | Sales phase and unit eligibility |
| Approved Future City property | Potentially, depending on project | Project-specific regime | Exact foreign-ownership approval |
| Ordinary Muscat apartment | No | May involve another permitted structure | Buyer and property eligibility |
| Ordinary residential plot | No | Highly dependent on legal status | Land classification and nationality |
| Agricultural land | No for non-Omanis | Restricted | Agricultural designation |
Why does Muscat suddenly look much more open to foreign buyers?
Foreign buyers really are getting access to a much larger Muscat property market, which is why the idea of a fully open city has started to sound believable.
For years, the easiest foreign-buyer story was concentrated around a small group of Integrated Tourism Complexes. Al Mouj Muscat became the obvious example: a foreigner could buy an apartment or villa in an internationally marketed waterfront community under a system specifically created for non-Omani ownership.
That market is now spreading geographically.
Telal Al Qurum is a useful example because it puts new foreign freehold residential supply in Bausher. Sultan Haitham City is even larger. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning describes the new city west of central Muscat as a 14.8-square-kilometre development with 20,000 homes, 18 neighborhoods and capacity for 100,000 residents.
The scale is completely different from the early foreign-buyer market.
When Sultan Haitham City was announced, Housing and Urban Planning Minister Khalfan Al Shuaili explicitly said that the project was intended to allow foreign ownership. Meanwhile, the city's first development agreements covered more than 6,000 homes, and subsequent phases have added several large residential neighborhoods.
Oman is therefore moving foreign property investment closer to the mainstream Muscat housing market. What has not happened is a blanket removal of the legal boundaries around ownership.
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Did Oman's new property laws let foreigners buy anywhere in Muscat?
No. Oman's latest property laws modernized the market, but neither Royal Decree 79/2025 nor Royal Decree 56/2026 says that every Muscat property can now be owned by any foreign national.
Royal Decree 79/2025 is broad legislation covering real estate development, brokers, owners' associations, off-plan sales and other parts of the industry. Crucially, the law itself preserves the existing legislation restricting non-Omani ownership in certain places.
That is hard to reconcile with the idea that Oman quietly abolished location restrictions.
Royal Decree 56/2026 deals with the Real Estate Registry. It strengthens the legal machinery through which ownership and other property rights are recorded and replaces a registry system that dated back to 1998.
The new registry framework is important for buyers because a cleaner registration system makes ownership easier to establish and transactions easier to formalize. But registration law answers how a permitted right is recorded. It does not automatically give every person the right to acquire every property.
Some of the recent headlines simply run ahead of the legislation.
Oman has made property investment easier, larger and more sophisticated. Citywide foreign ownership would require a much clearer legal change.
Can foreigners still get real freehold ownership in Muscat?
Yes. Non-Omani buyers can obtain genuine ownership in approved Muscat developments, and freehold supply is currently growing rather than disappearing.
Integrated Tourism Complexes remain the clearest route.
Oman's ITC ownership law specifically allows Omani and non-Omani individuals and companies to own land or constructed units inside licensed complexes for accommodation or investment. The government still runs an active Amlak service for buying property in these developments.
Al Mouj is the best-known Muscat example, but the category is wider than one neighborhood.
Telal Al Qurum makes that especially clear. According to the Oman News Agency's announcement of the project in March 2026, the OMR230 million development will combine hotels, leisure facilities, retail and residential units available for freehold ownership.
That gives foreign buyers a new type of location. Someone looking for foreign-owned residential property no longer has to think only about the established airport-side and tourism communities.
The Ministry of Heritage and Tourism also continues to publish the rules governing non-Omani ownership in ITCs. So this remains an active legal route rather than an old exception left over from an earlier phase of Oman's property market.
What buyers cannot safely do is extend that freehold status from an approved project to the surrounding neighborhood. A freehold development in Qurum does not make every apartment in Qurum foreign freehold.
| Example | Location | Foreign ownership signal | Scale/context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Al Mouj Muscat | Seeb | Established ITC ownership | Mature mixed-use waterfront community |
| Muscat Hills | Greater Muscat | Established foreign-buyer development | Apartments and villas |
| Telal Al Qurum | Bausher | Residential freehold announced | ~165,000 m²; ~OMR230m |
| Sultan Haitham City | Seeb | Foreign ownership included in original policy direction | 20,000 planned homes |
| Ordinary surrounding housing | Same wider districts | No automatic foreign-freehold status | Must be checked separately |
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Can foreigners buy homes in Sultan Haitham City?
Yes, foreign ownership is part of the plan for Sultan Haitham City, but buyers still need to check the particular project and unit instead of assuming the whole city works under one identical rule.
This development matters because Sultan Haitham City is much closer to an ordinary city than the resort-style communities historically associated with foreign property ownership in Oman.
The official master plan contains 20,000 homes across 18 neighborhoods for an eventual population of around 100,000. Villas, townhouses, apartments, schools, healthcare, parks and commercial space are all part of the plan.
When the project was presented publicly in 2023, Housing and Urban Planning Minister Khalfan Al Shuaili said Sultan Haitham City would allow foreign ownership. That was an important policy change because the city was also designed to serve Omanis, including households receiving government housing support.
The development programme has since become large enough for that openness to matter.
In February 2024, more than 35 development and partnership agreements worth around OMR1 billion were signed for the first phase. Eight residential neighborhoods alone were expected to deliver more than 6,000 units over roughly 2.2 million square metres. One smaller section of Neighborhood 6 was explicitly reserved 100% for Omani ownership, which is exactly why buyers should not assume every part of the city has identical eligibility.
Further agreements have continued to enlarge the project.
So Sultan Haitham City gives foreigners a much more mainstream way into Muscat housing. The catch is that “Sultan Haitham City is open to foreign investment” is less precise than “this specific title can be registered to this foreign buyer.”
Can a foreigner buy a normal apartment in Bausher, Seeb or Al Amerat?
Sometimes, but an ordinary apartment in Bausher, Seeb or Al Amerat should never be treated as foreign freehold just because another project nearby accepts international buyers.
This is probably the biggest practical trap in the current Muscat market.
Take Bausher. Telal Al Qurum creates a clear foreign-freehold opportunity there. That says nothing by itself about an unrelated apartment five minutes away.
The same problem appears in Seeb. Sultan Haitham City is opening new routes for foreign buyers, while Al Mouj has long accepted international ownership. Neither development makes every property in Seeb freely purchasable by every nationality.
Al Amerat has also attracted large integrated residential developments, yet project approval and the legal structure still determine who can own what.
Another route available in Oman is usufruct. Current government services allow a usufruct contract to run for as long as 99 years and allow the right to be transferred to another party. This can give a buyer very substantial long-term control over a property without giving them perpetual freehold ownership.
For someone searching listings online, all of these properties may look like homes “for sale.” Legally, they can be very different assets.
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Is a 99-year usufruct basically the same as owning the property?
No. A 99-year usufruct can feel very close to ownership in everyday use, but a foreign buyer should still value it differently from perpetual freehold.
Oman's current government property services allow registered usufruct arrangements lasting between one and 99 years. A separate government service allows the usufruct right to be transferred to another person.
That makes usufruct much stronger than a normal tenancy.
A holder can have a formally registered property right that lasts for decades and may be transferable under the contract. For someone buying a home to occupy for 10 or 20 years, the practical difference from freehold can initially feel small.
The economics change as the remaining term falls.
A freehold title does not naturally expire after 99 years. A usufruct right does. A future buyer looking at a contract with 85 years left is buying something different from another buyer looking at the same property with 30 years remaining.
This is why the word “ownership” can hide too much in Muscat.
Before comparing prices, we would want to know whether the buyer receives freehold title, a registered usufruct or another property right. Otherwise two apartments advertised at the same price may not actually offer the same thing.
| Right | Typical duration | Can it be registered? | Main difference for buyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freehold ownership | Permanent | Yes | Property ownership does not expire through time |
| Usufruct | Up to 99 years | Yes | Right eventually expires |
| Transferred usufruct | Remaining contractual term | Yes | Buyer receives the remaining right |
| Ordinary tenancy | Contract term | Lease relationship | Much weaker than a registered long-term property right |
Does living in Oman let an expat buy any Muscat property?
No. An expat residence card does not give a non-Omani the same residential property rights as an Omani citizen.
Residence status can interact with property rules, but it does not erase them.
This distinction becomes clear when we compare the government's own services. GCC citizens have a specific service allowing them to own real estate in Oman, subject to restrictions. Tourist-complex buyers use another ownership route. Property owners can also qualify for particular residence permits.
If ordinary residency automatically unlocked the entire property market, these separate systems would make little sense.
The reverse relationship has become increasingly important: buying eligible property can help a foreigner obtain residency.
The Royal Oman Police currently offers a two-year residence visa for owners of residential units in Integrated Tourism Complexes. Oman also runs a long-term Golden Residency programme for larger investors.
So property can affect someone's immigration status. Having immigration status first does not give that person a blank cheque to purchase whichever Muscat villa they like.
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Did Oman's Golden Residency open ordinary Muscat neighborhoods to foreigners?
Oman's Golden Residency gives wealthy foreign investors broader privileges, but the current official wording is too inconsistent for us to treat it as proof that every ordinary Muscat property is now foreign-buyable.
This is one of the areas where buyers should be particularly careful with simplified explanations.
The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion currently describes the Investor Residence Platform as offering five- or ten-year renewable residence and says the programme allows property ownership outside Integrated Tourism Complexes.
That sounds extremely broad.
Yet Oman's dedicated Golden Residency website describes real estate eligibility more narrowly. It says applicants can qualify by owning property in tourism zones. Invest Oman has also described the real estate route as ownership of completed units within Integrated Tourism Complexes, with a minimum investment of OMR200,000 for the ten-year programme.
These government descriptions are not identical.
The sensible reading is that investor-residency holders may have access to privileges beyond the basic ITC system under qualifying rules, while the broader promotional sentence should not be read as permission to buy every residential property in Muscat without further approval.
For a buyer considering an ordinary villa or apartment outside a clearly approved foreign-ownership project, we would want written confirmation from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning before relying on the residency programme.
The government's own current wording gives us a reason to verify, not a reason to assume.
Are Saudi, Emirati and other GCC buyers treated like other foreigners in Muscat?
No. GCC nationals have much broader property rights in Oman than most other foreign buyers, so saying simply that “foreigners can buy” often creates the wrong impression.
Gov.om currently operates a dedicated service allowing citizens of GCC countries to own real estate in Oman.
The rules even contemplate GCC citizens owning more than one residential plot, subject to conditions. Buyers must generally be at least 21, and vacant land comes with rules around development, sale and investment.
There are still geographic restrictions.
Oman's government services specifically prevent GCC citizens from buying agricultural land and property in a number of sensitive or prohibited areas. These include several governorates, strategic mountains, islands, areas close to palaces or military and security sites, and designated heritage areas.
For Muscat buyers, the bigger lesson is about nationality.
A Saudi buyer browsing an ordinary residential property may have a legal route that a French, British, Indian or American buyer does not have.
Agents who use “expat buyer” or “foreign buyer” as a single category can therefore obscure the most important fact in the transaction.
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Can foreigners buy residential land in Muscat and build their own villa?
Only in qualifying situations. A non-GCC foreigner should not assume that an ordinary residential plot in Muscat can be bought simply because the seller is willing to sell it.
Approved foreign-ownership projects can include villas, land or other residential formats. The ITC framework expressly allows non-Omanis to own land or constructed units inside qualifying complexes.
Sultan Haitham City's master plan also includes detached villas, semi-detached villas and townhouses alongside apartments.
Once buyers start searching ordinary plots outside those structures, the position becomes much less straightforward.
Oman still maintains a Law on the Prohibition of Non-Omani Ownership of Land and Real Estate in Certain Places. Agricultural property is explicitly restricted for non-Omanis throughout the country. Other sensitive locations are also excluded.
Muscat itself is much less restricted geographically than governorates such as Musandam or Al Wusta. That still does not create a general right for every non-Omani to buy every residential plot.
For a foreign buyer who wants to build a standalone villa, the safer search starts with land specifically approved for that buyer's ownership route rather than with any attractive plot advertised on the open market.
Is Muscat's foreign property market actually getting much bigger?
Yes. The foreign-accessible part of Muscat is becoming large enough that calling it a niche resort market is now outdated.
Sultan Haitham City provides the clearest scale comparison.
The official plan contains 20,000 homes and space for 100,000 residents. The first major development agreements covered more than 6,000 residential units across eight neighborhoods. Later agreements added further large neighborhoods and infrastructure packages.
Meanwhile, new ITCs are appearing in locations that feel increasingly integrated into everyday Muscat.
Telal Al Qurum brings an OMR230 million foreign-freehold project into Bausher. The development includes hotels, recreation, retail and residential property rather than relying on housing alone.
Oman's wider ITC pipeline was already large before these latest projects. The Ministry of Heritage and Tourism previously estimated investment in complexes under implementation at roughly OMR4.38 billion, with another OMR3.12 billion in licensed projects that had not yet entered implementation.
Put together, the direction is clear. Foreign-accessible property is spreading from a small collection of prestige developments into a much broader pipeline of urban housing.
We still should not translate that growth into universal access. The expansion is happening through approved developments, specific legal regimes and new projects rather than through one simple Muscat-wide ownership rule.
| Evidence of expansion | Scale | What has changed |
|---|---|---|
| Sultan Haitham City | 20,000 planned homes | Foreign buyers can participate in a major new city |
| First SHC residential agreements | >6,000 homes | Large pipeline rather than boutique supply |
| Telal Al Qurum | ~OMR230m | New freehold supply inside Bausher |
| Telal Al Qurum site | ~165,000 m² | Foreign ownership moving into established Muscat |
| ITCs under implementation nationally | ~OMR4.38bn investment | Existing foreign-buyer model already has significant scale |
| Other licensed ITCs | ~OMR3.12bn investment | More potential supply remains in the pipeline |
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If a Muscat project says “freehold,” can a foreign buyer trust that?
A foreign buyer should treat “freehold” as something to verify against the exact Muscat unit and title, rather than as enough information to pay a deposit.
This has become more important as foreign-buyable supply spreads across more types of development.
With an established Integrated Tourism Complex, the legal route is relatively easy to identify. Oman has specific legislation for non-Omani ownership in ITCs and a government service for registering those transactions.
Newer developments can require more homework.
Sultan Haitham City, for instance, contains numerous neighborhoods and developers. Some phases were publicly described as allowing foreign ownership, while at least one smaller development agreement explicitly allocated 100% of its homes to Omani ownership.
That alone shows why the city name cannot answer every ownership question.
We would therefore want the developer or seller to identify the ownership regime for the exact unit and confirm that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning can register the buyer under that regime.
For an off-plan property, we would also check the preliminary registration, approved development documents and payment protections.
The new Real Estate Registry Law makes formal registration more central to the system. That gives buyers better legal infrastructure, but it also makes an agent's informal description less useful. What ultimately matters is the right the registry will recognize.
Is buying off-plan in Muscat safer for foreign buyers now?
Yes, the legal framework around Muscat off-plan property is stronger today, although a registered purchase can still become a bad investment or a delayed project.
Oman's recent Real Estate Regulation Law brought development activity, off-plan sales and related property-market rules into a more unified framework.
The new Real Estate Registry Law goes further on the ownership side. It recognizes a preliminary real estate register, giving rights linked to property under construction a formal place in the registration system before the final property is completed.
That is useful in a market where so much new foreign-accessible supply is being sold years before completion.
Sultan Haitham City alone is a multi-phase project whose development stretches well into the future. Telal Al Qurum is planned in phases over approximately 15 years. Buyers in these markets may commit capital long before they receive a finished home.
Formal registration helps protect the legal existence of the transaction.
It cannot make a developer build faster, guarantee the surrounding district will mature on schedule or ensure that an investor will achieve the advertised rent.
Those risks deserve more attention now precisely because foreign buyers have many more off-plan choices than they used to.
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Does buying property in Muscat automatically give a foreigner residency?
No. Property-linked residency exists in Oman, but the residence benefit depends on the qualifying property and programme rather than on any Muscat purchase.
The clearest straightforward route still comes from Integrated Tourism Complexes.
The Royal Oman Police's current property-owner visa service covers owners of residential units inside ITCs and grants a two-year residence visa, subject to its conditions.
Larger investors have another option through Golden Residency.
Oman's official Golden Residency programme offers ten-year residency through several investment routes. Real estate is one route, and the programme currently states a minimum qualifying investment of OMR200,000, around US$520,000. Other routes include businesses, government bonds, listed shares and fixed deposits.
As discussed above, current government pages differ slightly over how far outside ITCs the investor-residence property privilege extends. That makes it especially unwise to buy an ordinary Muscat property on the assumption that residency will automatically follow.
The practical order should be simple: identify the property, verify that the foreign buyer can legally hold the title, then verify which residency programme that exact purchase qualifies for.
Buying first and asking about residency afterward is a much riskier way to do it.
Is Muscat basically becoming like Dubai for foreign property buyers?
No. Muscat is clearly moving toward a larger international property market, but foreign buyers still have to think much more about the legal status of each project than they generally do across Dubai's established freehold districts.
The similarity is strongest in the direction of travel.
Oman wants more international capital in real estate. It is building master-planned cities, licensing new tourism complexes, offering investor residency and improving registration. Projects such as Al Mouj, Sultan Haitham City and Telal Al Qurum give foreigners increasingly varied places to live and invest.
The difference appears as soon as someone searches outside those clearly approved projects.
In Muscat, the buyer may need to distinguish between an ITC title, Future City eligibility, usufruct, GCC ownership rights and ordinary property that remains unavailable under the same terms.
Dubai also has designated ownership rules, but decades of expansion have created huge, clearly established freehold districts where foreign ownership is routine.
Muscat has not reached that level of simplicity.
For buyers, that may gradually change as more projects are approved. For now, the relevant question is still “Can I own this exact property?” rather than merely “Is this property in Muscat?”
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So can foreigners really buy anywhere in Muscat now?
No. Foreigners can buy across a much wider slice of Muscat than they could a few years ago, but saying they can buy anywhere is still wrong.
The strongest evidence for liberalization is now easy to see.
Traditional ITCs such as Al Mouj continue to offer established foreign ownership. Sultan Haitham City is bringing international buyers into a planned city of 20,000 homes. Telal Al Qurum adds a roughly OMR230 million freehold development in Bausher. Long-term usufruct provides another route in situations where the buyer is acquiring a registered right rather than permanent freehold.
Oman has also overhauled real estate regulation and registration, while investor-residency programmes make eligible property more attractive to foreigners.
Yet the legal distinctions remain important.
GCC nationals have broader ownership rights than other foreigners. Agricultural land remains restricted. Approved developments can sit beside ordinary properties that do not carry the same foreign-ownership status. Even inside a large new city, different phases can have different buyer rules.
There is also enough variation in current government language around investor-residency privileges to make sweeping claims especially risky.
So the most accurate description of Muscat today is a rapidly expanding foreign-buyer market built around approved routes and projects. It is already much broader than the old handful of expat compounds, and new developments are pushing foreign ownership into more mainstream parts of the capital.
But a non-GCC foreigner still cannot open a map of Muscat, point at any residential property and assume it can be registered in their name. That final restriction is why the answer to the title remains no.
OUR METHODOLOGY
The question of whether foreigners can now buy anywhere in Muscat sounds simple, but the evidence sits across several different parts of Oman's property system. We broke the question into the things that actually determine the answer: who can buy, what type of property right they can obtain, where those rights apply, how the latest property and registry laws affect them, how residency programmes interact with ownership, and how quickly foreign-accessible supply is expanding.
We prioritized current legislation, government services, ministry publications and official project announcements. Legal rights and registration rules carried more weight than promotional language, while major development announcements were used mainly to judge the direction, geographic spread and scale of the market.
We also separated evidence of market liberalization from evidence of universal access. A new foreign-freehold project, a future city or a broader investment programme can materially expand the market without making every surrounding apartment, villa or plot foreign-buyable.
Where official sources described a privilege with different levels of breadth, we treated the clearest common position as established and did not turn a broad promotional statement into a wider ownership right than the underlying evidence supported. This is especially relevant to current descriptions of Golden Residency and property ownership outside Integrated Tourism Complexes.
We treated freehold ownership, usufruct and residency as separate questions. A buyer can have a strong registered property right without perpetual freehold, and a qualifying property can support residency without ordinary residence status creating a general right to buy anywhere.
We did not treat sources as equal votes. Laws and official ownership services were used for legal eligibility, title and usufruct rules for the nature of the right being acquired, project-level approvals for actual foreign-accessible supply, and development pipelines for the scale of the opening.
Key sources include Royal Decree 79/2025 from the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs, Royal Decree 56/2026 on the Real Estate Registry, the official Integrated Tourism Complex ownership law, Gov.om's ITC ownership service, Gov.om's GCC ownership service, the official usufruct-title service, Oman News Agency on Sultan Haitham City's scale, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning on foreign ownership in Hai Al Wafa, the government announcement for Telal Al Qurum, the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism's ITC regulations, the property-owner residence service, Oman's Golden Residency platform, Invest Oman on the OMR200,000 real-estate route, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion on Golden Residency privileges, and Al Mouj's first-hand buyer-eligibility page.
Buying real estate in Muscat can be risky
An increasing number of foreign investors are showing interest. However, 90% of them will make mistakes. Avoid the pitfalls with our comprehensive guide.
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