Saudi Arabia

Registering Property in

Saudi Arabia

Listed below is a detailed summary of the steps, time and cost involved in registering property, assuming a standardized case of an entrepreneur who wants to purchase land and a building that is already registered and free of title dispute.

The information appearing on this page was collected as part of the Doing Business project, which measures and compares regulations relevant to the life cycle of a small- to medium-sized domestic business in 183 economies. The most recent round of data collection for the project was completed in June 2011.

  • Standard Property Transfer

  • Property Value: SAR 3,196,795.56
  • City: Riyadh

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No. Procedure Time to Complete Associated Costs
1 Legal representatives of the parties appear before the notary public for the transfer of the title deeds

The legal representatives of the buyer and the seller attend at the First Notary Public Department in Riyadh.
The receptionist at the First Notary Public Department will give the legal representatives a transfer note for presentation to one of the notaries public within the Notary Public Department. Copies of the articles of association of the buyer and seller have to be presented to the notary public to ensure that the parties are authorized to sell and purchase real property.
The First Notary Public Department in Riyadh has adopted in June 2007 a comprehensive electronic system of registering title deeds. The responsible notary public will
(i) reviews the original title deed, (ii) reviews the copies of articles of association of the seller and the buyer to ensure that the parties are authorized to sell and purchase real property, (iii) reviews the documents evidencing the authorities of the legal representatives of the seller and the buyer, and (iv) reviews the original check showing the value of the plot.
Once the responsible notary public is satisfied that all documents are available, he will transfer internally the transfer to the Records Department.
The original title deed must be submitted to the notary public by the seller.

The details of the transactions are copied into the title register internally. The Records Department then prepares a new title deed showing the buyer as the owner of the property (the “New Title Deed”). The new title deed is now included electronically in the comprehensive records of all title deeds in the city of Riyadh. The legal representatives will appear again before the responsible notary public, who will print a copy of the new title deed and ask the legal representatives along with two witnesses to sign a standard form, sale agreement. The new title deed will be given to the legal representative of the buyer. The sale agreement will be scanned and saved in the comprehensive record file and the original sale agreement will be retained by the responsible notary public.



Agency: First Notary Public Department 		1 day no cost
2 Legal representative of the buyer signs receipt and obtains the title deed from the notary public

The legal representative of the buyer will then obtain from the notary public the original new title deed which contains the full details of the transaction, stating the buyer as the owner of the property. The buyer will simply be required to appear before the notary, sign a confirmation of receipt of the title deed and receive the title deed. The whole procedure will take approximately two hours.

Agency: First Notary Public Department 		1 day no cost
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