Moving from public land allocation to public land productivity in Saudi Arabia

Over the past decade, Saudi Arabia has leveraged public land to support housing delivery, infrastructure provision and broader economic development under Vision 2030.¹ State-backed development and investment entities, and other public-sector development companies and municipalities have mobilised land to support these initiatives. In fact, in August, the country approved a framework allowing investors to develop residential projects under a partial land ownership system, aimed at stimulating investment in the housing sector and expanding home ownership opportunities.²

So how can the Kingdom now get more value from the land already under public ownership. How can the country focus on improving how land, infrastructure and investment decisions are coordinated, ensuring public investments create long-term value, and measuring success based on outcomes rather than land transactions?

Our experience across international markets suggests that public land can create more enduring value when it is managed as a long-term development asset, rather than being treated primarily as a one-off source of revenue.

 Saudi Arabia is well positioned to take this approach further.

Most public organisations still focus on traditional measures such as land area, land value or proceeds from land sales. These metrics are easy to report but reveal little about the actual contribution of land to national development.

The more important questions forming a balanced scorecard tackling economic, social and strategic benefits are:

• How many homes were delivered?
• How much private investment was attracted?
• How many jobs were created?
• How much infrastructure was enabled?

We have been that in Singapore, for example, the JTC Corporation (a government agency focused on industrial infrastructure and business estates) measures success through industrial growth, investment attraction and economic output.³ Saudi Arabia already tracks several of these outcomes through individual Vision 2030 programmes, including indicators related to housing delivery, economic contribution, job creation and private-sector participation.⁴

The next step is to adopt a common set of performance measures across major public landowners.

Practical action

We propose establishing a small set of shared KPIs for major public land portfolios, including:

• Housing delivered
• Private investment mobilized
• Jobs created
• Recurring revenues generated
• Infrastructure enabled

A common scorecard would make it easier to compare performance across different entities, prioritise investments and allocate resources.

Developers and investors need certainty. In many rapidly growing cities, land release, infrastructure investment and private development often follow different timelines. In our experience, greater visibility over future land opportunities can help the market plan earlier and allocate capacity more effectively. Several countries use public land pipelines to provide this forward view of development opportunities.

Singapore’s Government Land Sales programme⁵ and Homes England’s Land Hub6 provide examples of public-sector mechanisms that give the market forward visibility of planned land opportunities.

 The objective is not to commit to every site, years in advance. It is to provide enough visibility on enabling infrastructure, zoning and transit development for the market to plan. This is particularly relevant for major growth corridors, transit-oriented developments and emerging economic clusters.

Practical action

We propose a rolling five-to-10-year pipeline of strategic public land opportunities.

For each site, provide:

• Intended land use
• Development model
• Infrastructure requirements
• Expected release timing

This would help developers, contractors, infrastructure providers and investors prepare earlier and invest with greater confidence.

Infrastructure increases land values, and we have seen that this holds true for for major roads, logistics hubs and public realm investments. Too often, however, the value created by infrastructure is captured entirely by adjacent landowners while the public sector bears the cost.

Many jurisdictions have addressed this through land value capture mechanisms. Hong Kong's MTR provides a well-established example. Transit investment and property development are planned together, allowing part of the increase in land value to support the transport network.⁷

We believe that Saudi Arabia's Riyadh Metro, Sports Boulevard and major urban regeneration projects provide strong foundations needed to adopt similar approaches.

Practical action

We propose to develop and clearly communicate a standard land value capture approach for major infrastructure projects.

For each site, provide:

• Joint developments
• Development rights
• Revenue-sharing arrangements
• Density incentives, etc.

We believe that a pilot around selected Riyadh Metro stations would provide valuable lessons before wider application.

So how can Saudi Arabia maintain delivery at scale while expanding the capacity of the broader housing ecosystem? We believe that public land can play an important role here if we create the conditions that allow multiple developers to build faster and more efficiently. This includes land readiness, infrastructure provision, planning certainty and access to financing.

Practical action

Saudi Arabia’s National Housing Company has already demonstrated what can be achieved when these elements are brought together.⁸ Building on this success, we propose a governance framework in the Kingdom that will enable expedited housing delivery by enabling collaboration among multiple stakeholders:

• Modular construction and industrialised building systems manufacturers
• SME developers
• Institutional investment in housing
• Financing and insurance providers

The first of these areas presents a broader economic opportunity. The scale and continuity of housing demand could help create the conditions for new construction technology and advanced-manufacturing clusters, particularly in modular construction and industrialised building systems. In this way, housing delivery would not only address residential demand, but could also support local manufacturing capability, innovation and supply-chain development.

Not every parcel of public land should be evaluated through a housing or real estate lens. In many cases, the greatest long-term value comes from supporting productive economic activity. 

Saudi Arabia has already established strong foundations through MODON,⁹ special economic zones¹⁰ and major sector-specific initiatives. The opportunity now is to strengthen the links between land allocation, infrastructure investment, workforce development and investment attraction.

Practical action

We propose identifying a small number of priority sectors where public land can be combined with:

• Infrastructure
• Investment incentives
• Workforce programs
• Private capital

This approach can help accelerate growth in sectors that support economic diversification and long-term competitiveness.

We feel that improving the productivity of existing public land assets requires a stronger focus on outcomes, better coordination between land and infrastructure decisions, greater transparency around future opportunities and more systematic approaches to capturing value created by public investment.

The measure of success should be how much housing is delivered, how much investment is attracted, how many jobs are created and how much long-term value is generated for the Kingdom.