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SUMMARY
Yes. New Murabba is still too early to buy for a normal residential investor today, mainly because there is still no transparent public residential inventory with unit-level prices, payment schedules and contractual handover dates.
The project itself is no longer the main uncertainty. Large-scale excavation, multi-year infrastructure contracts and PIF backing show that New Murabba is a real construction programme rather than just a masterplan waiting to start.
The weaker point is that the residential investment case is still being asked to run ahead of the residential product. Buyers can register interest, but they still cannot properly compare apartments, calculate effective prices per square metre or see what each phase will actually deliver around handover.
The Mukaab pause makes that gap more important. New Murabba can still work as a neighbourhood without its flagship attraction, but an early buyer should not pay a big “future global landmark” premium while the centrepiece itself has an uncertain timetable.
The timetable has also stretched. New Murabba should now be treated as a phased development running toward roughly 2040, not as a city that suddenly becomes finished in 2030. A first residential phase could work much earlier, but buyers may still live beside major construction for years.
Location remains one of the stronger parts of the case. New Murabba sits in northwest Riyadh, close to established growth corridors, major roads and planned metro integration, which is a much better starting position than a remote greenfield mega-project.
Riyadh’s current market gives buyers little reason to rush. Residential transaction volumes have dropped sharply while apartment prices remain elevated, so there is a real gap between what recorded prices say and how many buyers are still willing or able to transact.
The supply side is just as important. Riyadh already has hundreds of thousands of planned homes coming through, and New Murabba itself adds another very large residential pipeline. Population growth helps, but scarcity cannot simply be assumed.
Saudi off-plan regulation and PIF ownership reduce some development risks, especially around licensing, escrow and buyer funds. They do not protect a buyer from paying too much, waiting longer than expected for the surrounding neighbourhood to mature, or finding a weak resale market later.
The eventual launch price will decide much of the argument. If ordinary apartments arrive near established northern Riyadh pricing, with a clear first phase and a construction-linked payment plan, buying early could become interesting very quickly. If buyers are asked to pay today for the value of the completed 2040 downtown, it will still be too early.
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Is New Murabba too early to buy?
Can you actually buy a home in New Murabba today?
New Murabba is still too early for a normal residential purchase because, as of now, the developer is collecting buyer interest rather than publicly selling a transparent inventory of priced homes.
New Murabba’s current residential website asks prospective buyers to register their interest in apartments and villas. Its broker portal does the same for agents interested in future off-plan and secondary-market opportunities. What we still cannot see publicly is the information that would let us properly value a purchase: individual units, floor areas, prices, payment schedules and contractual handover dates.
That puts New Murabba behind more mature Saudi developments where buyers can already compare real products. Diriyah, for example, has published residential projects such as Manazel AlHadawi with an advertised entry price below SAR 1.7 million.
There is also a useful clue in New Murabba’s own current material. Different official pages now refer to more than 90,000, more than 98,000 and, on another investor page, 120,000 residential units. The exact final housing programme is clearly still moving.
So today, registering for New Murabba makes sense. Deciding whether a unit is a good investment still requires a unit and a price.
| What buyers can verify today | New Murabba status | What is still missing | Why we care |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residential concept | Apartments and villas advertised | Exact projects and buildings | Product is still broad |
| Buyer registration | Live | Public unit inventory | No real stock comparison yet |
| Broker registration | Live | Public launch pricing | Price discovery has not started |
| Masterplan | Extensively published | Final residential mix | Official unit counts still vary |
| Payment plans | Not publicly available | Deposit and instalment schedule | Early-buyer economics unknown |
| Handover dates | Not publicly available by residence | Contractual delivery dates | Holding period cannot be priced properly |
Is New Murabba still mostly a rendering?
No. New Murabba is already a large physical construction programme, even though the homes and streets a buyer would actually use are still years behind the excavation work.
New Murabba reported more than 10 million cubic metres of excavation by late 2024 and more than 14 million cubic metres by 2025 around The Mukaab site. That is roughly the volume New Murabba itself compared with 5,400 Olympic swimming pools.
The project has also kept awarding work well after the original announcement. Parsons received a 60-month contract in 2026 covering infrastructure design, engineering, public buildings, landscaping and public realm. AECOM and Jacobs have worked on major design packages. New Murabba has signed agreements covering education, electric-vehicle infrastructure, technology and private-sector participation.
Earthworks alone can still leave a project stuck at the spectacular-construction-site stage. A five-year infrastructure mandate is more useful: roads, utilities and public spaces are the boring bits that eventually turn a masterplan into somewhere people can live.
Still, moving 14 million cubic metres of soil proves commitment and sunk investment. It does not tell us when a specific apartment will be finished or what will surround it on handover day.
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Did the Mukaab pause make New Murabba much riskier?
Yes. The Mukaab pause materially weakened the case for paying a large early premium for New Murabba, even though development of the wider district is continuing.
The Mukaab was always far more than an unusual building. At 400 metres in each dimension, it was designed to be the image people associated with New Murabba and one of the main reasons the district could become an international entertainment and tourism destination.
Construction beyond initial excavation and foundation work has now been suspended while Saudi authorities reassess financing and feasibility. Reuters reported that the surrounding New Murabba real estate programme would continue.
That changes how we would price an apartment. A home next to good parks, schools, offices, shops and transport can work financially without an iconic attraction. A home carrying a substantial “live beside The Mukaab” premium is harder to defend while the centrepiece has an uncertain construction timetable.
The distinction will become especially important when the first prices appear. If New Murabba prices ordinary apartments around the value of good northern Riyadh neighbourhoods, the landmark becomes potential upside. If the developer charges buyers today for the assumption that The Mukaab will definitely become a globally famous destination, buyers are taking a lot of that execution risk for free.
Is New Murabba still supposed to be finished by 2030?
No. Anyone evaluating New Murabba today should stop using 2030 as the date when the entire new downtown will suddenly be complete.
When PIF launched New Murabba in 2023, the public plan pointed to 2030 completion. The timetable has since changed substantially. Recent reporting on New Murabba now places full development around 2040, with construction proceeding in phases.
The latest leadership change fits that longer timetable. New Murabba now lists Sabah Barakat as acting CEO after Michael Dyke left the top role. Barakat is a senior PIF executive who had already led New Murabba during its formation, so this is closer to a shift in how the project is being run than a newcomer taking over an unfamiliar asset.
The Financial Times linked the change to wider PIF pressure around costs, project viability and delivery. At the same time, it reported that New Murabba’s approved masterplan remains intact and is expected to proceed toward 2040.
For residential buyers, phased delivery is what counts. A first neighbourhood can work years before the last building is complete. But a buyer receiving keys around the beginning of the next decade could still spend a long time living beside major construction.
| New Murabba milestone | Earlier expectation | Position now | What a homebuyer should assume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project launch | 2023 | Completed | Vision established |
| Major excavation | Early enabling works | 14m+ m³ completed | Large physical commitment |
| District infrastructure | Future phase | Multi-year design and engineering work underway | Increasingly tangible |
| 2030 | Broad original completion target | Full build-out no longer expected | City will still be developing |
| 2034 | Future national event milestone | World Cup creates infrastructure pressure | Useful catalyst, not completion date |
| Full New Murabba | Around 2030 originally | Now expected in phases toward 2040 | Long maturation period |
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Can New Murabba still work without The Mukaab?
Yes. New Murabba can become a valuable Riyadh neighbourhood without relying entirely on The Mukaab, but the ordinary city around the landmark now has to prove itself.
The scale alone makes this unavoidable. At MIPIM 2026, New Murabba described a 14 million-square-metre destination with more than 90,000 homes and space for more than 280,000 residents. Other current pages show even larger residential totals. Either way, we are talking about the population of a substantial city rather than a small luxury compound.
The residential idea is also quite different from much of traditional Riyadh: 25% green space, a “15-minute downtown,” local services, pedestrian routes and a multimodal transport system. New Murabba currently says it plans more than 115,000 trees and 150 kilometres of dedicated mobility routes.
If those elements arrive, people may want to live there because daily life is good. That is a stronger property thesis than hoping tourists visit a giant cube.
Uncertainty around The Mukaab makes the distinction sharper now. For an early purchase, we would favour homes whose immediate phase includes parks, local retail, schools and transport rather than units priced mainly around a future landmark view.
Does PIF backing make an early New Murabba purchase safe?
PIF backing makes New Murabba much less likely to disappear, but it does not make an early apartment automatically safe or well priced.
New Murabba Development Company is fully owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Few developers have access to comparable state backing, and the money already spent on land preparation, design, staff and infrastructure is significant.
For buyers, that lowers one obvious risk: dealing with a thinly capitalised developer whose entire business depends on deposits from the first few apartment sales.
The remaining risks are different. PIF can change a timetable. It can resize a component. It can redirect spending toward parts of the project with better economics. Recent changes around New Murabba show that this type of review is possible even inside a flagship development.
A buyer therefore still needs a specific project licence, escrow arrangements, construction milestones, a contractual delivery date and clear delay provisions. The name of the shareholder cannot replace those details.
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Is New Murabba actually in a good part of Riyadh?
Yes. New Murabba’s northwest Riyadh location is one of the strongest reasons to take the project seriously before it is finished.
The site sits around King Salman Road and King Khalid Road rather than on an isolated plot far beyond the existing city. New Murabba describes it as a short drive from King Khalid International Airport, with future metro integration, feeder transport, pedestrian routes and internal mobility loops.
That places it close to the northern side of Riyadh, where residential values are already much higher than the city average. Knight Frank put average Riyadh apartment prices around SAR 6,250 per square metre in 2025, while individual northern districts were already around SAR 9,000 per square metre or more.
Transport could deepen that difference. Knight Frank’s study of Riyadh Metro pricing found that moving 500 metres closer to a metro station was associated with about SAR 96 per square metre in extra apartment value. By the time the study was published, the metro had already carried more than 100 million passengers in its first nine months, so this was based on an operating transport network rather than a theoretical future benefit.
Expo 2030 and the 2034 World Cup also give Riyadh unusually hard infrastructure deadlines. They should help roads, transport and public facilities across the capital. We would still avoid assigning the full metro or event premium to a New Murabba apartment until its own station access and surrounding infrastructure are clear.
| Location factor | What exists now | New Murabba plan | Investment relevance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northwest Riyadh | Established growth corridor | New downtown inserted into it | Better than remote greenfield risk |
| Major roads | King Salman and King Khalid roads | Direct district access | Strong connectivity base |
| Riyadh Metro | Operating network | Planned New Murabba integration | Could create real accessibility premium |
| Walking | Limited in much of Riyadh | 15-minute downtown concept | Genuine product differentiation if delivered |
| Expo 2030 | Confirmed Riyadh event | Citywide infrastructure spending | Near-term infrastructure catalyst |
| World Cup 2034 | Confirmed Saudi event | More pressure to deliver Riyadh infrastructure | Another hard deadline before full build-out |
Is Riyadh property still booming right now?
Riyadh housing prices are still high, but the buying frenzy has already broken.
This is probably the most important current market change for anyone thinking about entering New Murabba early.
Knight Frank counted 67,520 residential transactions in Riyadh in 2024. In 2025, that fell to 30,408, a 55% drop in one year. The value of transactions fell 48% to SAR 42 billion.
Then activity weakened again. In the first quarter of 2026, transaction volumes and values in Riyadh were both 82% below the same period a year earlier. New residential mortgage contracts across Saudi Arabia were down 25% during the first four months of the year, while mortgage lending value fell 34%.
Prices have reacted much more slowly. Riyadh apartment values still rose 10.5% in 2025 to an average SAR 6,250 per square metre. They were another 6.3% higher year on year in the first quarter of 2026.
That gap is revealing. Far fewer buyers are willing or able to transact, while recorded prices have not yet fallen by anything close to the same magnitude.
So the current Riyadh market looks less like a crash and more like a liquidity squeeze. It is an awkward moment to pay a large premium for a home that does not yet exist.
| Riyadh residential measure | Previous level | Latest reading | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home sales | 67,520 in 2024 | 30,408 in 2025 | -55% |
| Transaction value | — | SAR 42bn in 2025 | -48% |
| Riyadh Q1 transaction activity | — | Volumes and values -82% YoY | Very sharp slowdown |
| Riyadh apartment prices | — | +10.5% in 2025 | Prices still climbed |
| Riyadh apartment prices, following Q1 | — | +6.3% YoY | Price correction lagged |
| New Saudi mortgage contracts | — | -25% YoY, first four months | Financing demand weaker |
| Saudi mortgage lending value | — | -34% YoY | Less money entering purchases |
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Does Riyadh’s slowdown give New Murabba buyers a reason to wait?
Yes. Right now, waiting gives a New Murabba buyer more information while the wider Riyadh market is giving very little reason to rush.
The long-term housing story remains strong. Knight Frank estimates Saudi nationals alone could require roughly 830,000 additional homes by 2034. Riyadh keeps adding jobs, corporate offices and infrastructure.
But buyers have become much more price-sensitive. The government’s Tawazoun programme has also introduced serviced Riyadh residential land capped at SAR 1,500 per square metre, giving households another option after years of rising prices.
New Murabba, meanwhile, has yet to publish the price that would compensate an early buyer for taking years of development risk.
Waiting until the first proper release could answer several questions at once: how aggressively New Murabba is priced, how much buyers pay upfront, how far away handover is and whether the first buildings come with usable infrastructure.
We could miss some upside if the first release is deliberately cheap and immediately sells out. Today, though, there is no public evidence that such a bargain exists.
Could all the new homes coming to Riyadh hurt New Murabba prices?
Yes. New Murabba will enter a market with huge housing demand, but also a huge construction pipeline, so we should not assume every new apartment becomes scarce.
Knight Frank estimates Riyadh had roughly 2.7 million homes in 2025 and identified about 346,700 units planned or due between 2026 and 2028. That alone is equivalent to adding housing for a major city within a few years.
New Murabba then adds another very large source of supply. Depending on which current developer page we use, the final plan contains more than 90,000 homes and could be materially higher.
Population growth can absorb plenty of new construction. Yet New Murabba still has to persuade residents to choose its apartments over NHC communities, existing northern neighbourhoods, Diriyah and other new projects.
That competition is healthy for buyers because it makes execution matter. A developer cannot simply point to Riyadh’s population growth and assume every unit deserves a premium.
The best New Murabba phases should have something concrete that nearby alternatives cannot easily offer: genuine walkability, easy metro access, strong public space or an unusually good mix of jobs and amenities.
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Can foreigners buy in New Murabba now?
Foreigners can now own Saudi property under a much more open system, but a foreign buyer still needs to check whether the exact New Murabba property falls within the permitted Riyadh rules.
Saudi Arabia’s new non-Saudi property ownership law came into force in early 2026. REGA now accepts applications through the Saudi Properties platform from residents, non-residents and eligible foreign companies.
Riyadh is governed through designated geographical ownership zones, with the permitted rights and ownership limits depending on the relevant area. REGA’s current platform allows buyers to explore those geographical rules rather than relying on the older, much more restrictive foreign-ownership system.
This is potentially important for New Murabba. A project targeting tens of thousands of higher-end urban homes becomes much easier to sell and resell if international residents and investors can participate.
Knight Frank’s latest international survey also found real interest in Saudi residential property. It identified about US$1.5 billion of private capital targeting residential purchases in the Kingdom and another US$3.4 billion targeting branded residences.
We should still be careful with the leap from “foreigners can legally buy” to “New Murabba will have a deep international resale market.” The new ownership regime is very young, and we do not yet have years of evidence showing how liquid Riyadh’s foreign-owned secondary market will be.
Are New Murabba off-plan buyers protected if construction is delayed?
Saudi Arabia gives off-plan buyers meaningful legal protection today, although those rules cannot protect an investor from paying too much.
Under REGA’s off-plan sale framework, a project generally needs to be licensed before full off-plan sales can proceed. Each licensed project requires a dedicated escrow account, and buyer money is subject to restrictions on how the developer can withdraw and use it.
Contracts must also identify the delivery date. Reservation deposits collected during the earlier marketing stage are capped at 5% under the relevant rules and are paid into escrow. If the required project licence does not follow within the permitted process, the regulations provide mechanisms for returning reservation funds.
Those are real protections against some of the worst forms of off-plan risk.
They do much less for investment risk. Escrow cannot stop a neighbourhood from taking longer to fill up. A licence cannot guarantee that a buyer will find someone willing to purchase the unit at a higher price five years later. And a legally delivered apartment can still be disappointing if the promised surrounding shops, schools and public spaces lag behind.
For New Murabba, we would therefore check the specific residential project rather than relying on the regulation in the abstract.
| Early-buyer risk | Saudi rules reduce it? | What regulation can do | What regulation cannot do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyer funds diverted elsewhere | Yes | Dedicated escrow controls | Guarantee investment return |
| Completely unlicensed off-plan sale | Yes | Licensing framework | Guarantee neighbourhood maturity |
| Unclear delivery commitment | Partly | Contract requires delivery terms | Prevent every delay |
| Construction quality | Partly | Regulatory and contractual standards | Guarantee premium finish |
| Wider New Murabba delays | No | — | Force surrounding phases to finish |
| Weak resale market | No | — | Create secondary-market buyers |
| Paying too much | No | — | Protect against overvaluation |
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What New Murabba price would make buying early interesting?
New Murabba could become attractive quite quickly if its first homes launch close to good northern Riyadh pricing rather than at a huge “future global downtown” premium.
The useful starting point is Riyadh itself. Knight Frank put the citywide apartment average at about SAR 6,250 per square metre in 2025. Some stronger northern districts were already around SAR 9,000 per square metre, while genuinely prime and branded homes can sit far above normal Riyadh pricing.
That gives us a way to test the eventual launch.
Around SAR 7,500 to SAR 9,000 per square metre, we would at least have an interesting debate. A buyer could be paying somewhat above the city average without automatically paying more than established northern neighbourhoods.
At SAR 12,500, an apartment would already cost twice the recent Riyadh average. New Murabba would need a strong building, a good payment plan and much more certainty around the first phase.
At SAR 15,000, the premium reaches roughly 140% over that benchmark. The future downtown story would already be heavily embedded in the price.
At SAR 25,000 or SAR 30,000, we would be evaluating a luxury product rather than a general New Murabba investment. The building, brand, scarcity and location inside the district would have to be exceptional.
These levels are valuation tests rather than forecasts of what New Murabba will charge.
| Hypothetical New Murabba price | Premium to SAR 6,250/m² Riyadh average | How we would read it today | What we would want in return |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAR 7,500/m² | +20% | Interesting | Good phase and payment plan |
| SAR 9,000/m² | +44% | Defensible for the right product | Strong specification and infrastructure |
| SAR 12,500/m² | +100% | Expensive this early | Much more delivery certainty |
| SAR 15,000/m² | +140% | Aggressive | Prime building and unusually strong terms |
| SAR 25,000/m² | +300% | Luxury pricing | Brand, scarcity and exceptional location |
| SAR 30,000/m² | +380% | Very high expectations already priced in | Truly differentiated asset |
Could the first New Murabba buyers still make the most money?
Yes. The first New Murabba release could eventually be the best entry point, provided early buyers actually receive a discount for accepting uncertainty.
That is where buying early can work extremely well in a masterplanned district.
The first owners arrive before the trees mature, restaurants open, offices fill, transport improves and the neighbourhood has a reputation. If those things subsequently happen, later buyers are usually willing to pay more because they can see what the first buyer had to imagine.
But the mathematics only works when the developer leaves some of that future value on the table.
Imagine an apartment that might reasonably be worth SAR 15,000 per square metre once New Murabba is established. Buying years earlier at SAR 8,500 gives the buyer room to be rewarded for construction and timing risk. Buying at SAR 14,000 because the sales brochure already prices the finished-district story leaves much less upside while the buyer still carries the uncertainty.
So being early is not automatically the problem. Paying a late-stage price at an early-stage project is.
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What would make New Murabba ready to buy?
New Murabba becomes much easier to buy once we can see a real home, a real price, a real handover date and the part of the city that will actually exist around it.
The first thing we need is a proper residential launch. Floorplans, net sellable areas, service charges, payment schedules and building-level pricing matter much more than another masterplan rendering.
Then we need phase-specific delivery information. A 2040 completion horizon tells us almost nothing about an apartment due years earlier. We want to know which roads, parks, shops, schools and transport connections will operate when that particular building hands over.
The REGA licence and escrow arrangement should be verified for the exact project. We would also compare the effective price per square metre with established northern Riyadh districts and competing off-plan projects rather than comparing New Murabba only with other giga-project marketing.
Finally, the first few months of actual sales will tell us something the announcements cannot. Strong demand at firm prices is genuine price discovery. Large incentives, increasingly stretched payment plans or repeated launch extensions would tell a different story.
We do not need to wait for New Murabba to become a finished city. We need enough facts to know how much we are being paid for arriving before everyone else.
So, is New Murabba too early to buy?
Yes. For a normal residential investor, New Murabba is still too early to buy today, although we are probably approaching the stage where it becomes worth watching very closely.
New Murabba has already cleared an important credibility hurdle. There is major physical work on site, a multi-year infrastructure programme, PIF backing and an active plan to build a very large mixed-use district in a strong part of Riyadh. This is no longer something we can dismiss as a collection of renders.
The awkward bit is timing. Full development now stretches toward 2040. The flagship attraction carries more uncertainty than it once did. Riyadh home sales have fallen dramatically while prices remain elevated. Hundreds of thousands of additional homes are coming to the city. And New Murabba itself still asks residential buyers to register their interest without publishing the prices and contractual details needed to calculate a return.
For now, patience has value because every major milestone gives the buyer more information and New Murabba has not yet shown us a price that compensates for giving that information up.
The answer could change fast once the first real residential launch appears. If ordinary New Murabba apartments come close to established northern Riyadh prices, with a construction-linked payment plan and a clearly defined early phase, buying early could become very interesting.
If New Murabba instead asks buyers to pay today for the value of the completed 2040 downtown, it will still be too early.
Right now, we would register, follow the first residential release and keep the money ready. We would not rush to deploy it before the price tells us why taking the risk early is worth it.
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OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether New Murabba is too early to buy based on the evidence available today. We treated the question as a decision problem: whether an early residential buyer is being offered enough potential upside to justify taking development, timing, market, supply and resale risk before the district is mature.
We broke the question into the parts that actually determine whether an early purchase makes sense: whether homes can be bought today, how far physical execution has progressed, what the current delivery timetable looks like, how much the Mukaab matters to the residential case, the quality of the location, Riyadh’s current housing market, future competing supply, foreign-buyer access, off-plan protections and the eventual price asked for all of that uncertainty.
For project execution, we gave more weight to observable changes than to promotional targets. That means current New Murabba residential registration pages, excavation milestones, awarded infrastructure contracts, leadership changes and revised delivery reporting matter more in this analysis than long-term renderings or broad statements about what the district may eventually contain.
We treated the Mukaab separately from the wider district because the two risks are now different. The wider New Murabba real-estate programme can continue even if the flagship attraction is delayed or redesigned, so we did not assume that uncertainty around one component means the full residential district fails.
We used Riyadh market data as the main valuation and timing benchmark. Current transaction volumes, apartment prices, mortgage activity, metro effects and planned housing supply tell us more about what an early buyer is competing with than comparisons with other Saudi giga-projects alone.
The hypothetical New Murabba price levels in the article are not forecasts. They are valuation tests anchored to Riyadh’s apartment average, stronger northern districts and competing residential products. Their purpose is to show how much future New Murabba success would already be embedded in a launch price at different levels.
We also separated legal protection from investment protection. Saudi off-plan licensing, escrow rules and contractual delivery requirements can reduce some development risks, but they cannot guarantee neighbourhood maturity, resale liquidity or a good return if the purchase price is too high.
Where New Murabba’s own current pages publish different residential-unit totals, we did not force them into one definitive figure. We treated the variation itself as evidence that the final programme is still evolving and used the figure relevant to each specific point.
The conclusion is therefore time-sensitive. A real residential launch with building-level prices, payment terms, contractual handover dates, project-specific REGA documentation and a clearly defined first phase could change the answer quickly. The methodology would stay the same; the evidence going into it would change.
Key sources used for this analysis include: New Murabba’s residential buyer registration page, New Murabba’s current mixed-use development figures, New Murabba’s MIPIM 2026 masterplan update, New Murabba’s sustainability targets, New Murabba’s transport and mobility plan, New Murabba’s excavation update, Parsons on its five-year New Murabba infrastructure contract, PIF’s original New Murabba launch, the Financial Times on restructuring, Mukaab delays and the longer staged timetable, Knight Frank’s Q1 2026 Saudi residential update, Knight Frank’s Destination Saudi 2026 report, Knight Frank on the Riyadh Metro’s effect on residential values, Diriyah Company’s Manazel AlHadawi pricing, REGA’s non-Saudi ownership law, REGA’s non-Saudi ownership platform, and REGA’s implementing regulations for off-plan sales and leases.
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