RIYADH — The total number of houses occupied by Saudi families rose to 3.68 million, according to the bulletin of the General Authority of Statistics (GaStat). The percentage of "owned" houses occupied by Saudi families increased by 62.08 percent, reaching 2.2 million families by the first half of 2019 while compared to 60.49 percent during the same period in 2018. In contrast to the increase in ownership rates, rented and occupied homes in Saudi families during the same period declined by 35.49 percent by 1.3 million families, compared to 37.63 percent in the first half of last year, the Saudi Press Agency reported. The number of concrete homes owned by Saudi nationals increased to more than 1.9 million in the first half of 2019, bringing the proportion of concrete houses owned by Saudis to about 53.31 percent as of mid-2019, compared to 51.7 percent during the same period in 2018. Meanwhile, records of the Ministry of Housing showed that the number of beneficiaries of housing support provided by the ministry's "Sakani" housing program has reached 79.641 Saudi families until the middle of this year, an increase of 19 percent compared to the same period in 2018, with a registration of 67,070 Saudi families at the level of administrative regions. GaStat pointed out that these percentages do not reflect the percentage of individuals owning houses. The report pointed out that the number of houses occupied by Saudi families in the Kingdom increased in mid-2019 by 1.6 percent compared to mid-2018. The authority's housing bulletin aims to provide data on houses occupied by Saudi families (owned, rented and provided by the employer) at the level of administrative areas in the Kingdom, as well as to carry out study about the impact of housing characteristics and the surrounding environment, create a database on housing and meet the local and international requirements and the needs of planners and researchers from the basic data about the characteristics of housing required by development plans. The bulletin also aims to make available periodic housing data and indicators to measure changes in housing characteristics with the passage of time, and making local, regional and international comparisons, in addition to evaluating developments and growth in the field of housing in terms of the type and age of the housing inhabited by families.
