Capital, collected.
Property, acquired. رأس مال مجمّع.
عقارٌ مُكتسب. سند — سندك للاستحواذ على العقار التجاري SANAD — your backing into commercial real estate

If you are a Saudi individual looking to acquire commercial property in 2026, you have probably noticed the same thing I have. The market is moving faster than the financing options are. Vision 2030 has put commercial real estate on a different trajectory. New districts are being built. Existing ones are being redeveloped. Logistics demand is rising. Hospitality is expanding. Office stock in Riyadh is being absorbed almost as fast as it comes online.

And yet, when a qualified individual wants to actually buy a piece of that — an office unit, a retail strip, a small warehouse, a clinic — the financing path is often unclear. Banks underwrite residential mortgages all day, but commercial financing for individuals is harder to access. Private deals get done, but they tend to involve people you already know.

This guide is for the rest of us. It walks through what commercial real estate financing actually looks like for individuals in Saudi Arabia today, what is changing under SAMA's framework for marketplace-based financing, and what you should know before you start a deal.

What "commercial real estate financing" actually means

Let's start with the terminology, because people use it loosely.

Residential financing is what you get when you buy a home for yourself. The Real Estate Development Fund is involved. Banks like Al Rajhi, SNB, and Riyad Bank offer programs at scale. Down payments are structured. Tenors stretch 20 years or longer.

Commercial financing is something else. The property generates income. The financing is structured around that income — the rent the property collects, the leases in place, the tenants paying. The borrower's personal balance sheet still matters, but the asset is doing most of the work.

For individuals, this distinction has historically been a barrier. Most banks treat commercial financing as corporate business. Their underwriting models, internal credit committees, and capital allocation are built for companies, not people. When an individual walks in asking to finance a commercial property, the process tends to either default to a personal loan (small, short, expensive) or get routed through commercial channels designed for someone else.

The asset is what generates the cash flow. The financing should be structured around the asset. That is the principle that unlocks commercial real estate for individuals.

The market in 2026: bigger than people realize

Saudi banks' real estate lending crossed SAR 883 billion by the end of 2024, according to SAMA's own data. Of that, about 77 percent was lending to individuals — but almost all of that was residential. The commercial slice grew faster on a percentage basis (over 26 percent year-on-year for corporate borrowers), but it stayed mostly out of reach for individual buyers.

Meanwhile, the underlying market is enormous. Conservative estimates put the total addressable Saudi commercial real estate financing opportunity at SAR 280 billion or more, depending on how you count. That includes offices, retail centers, warehouses, clinics, education facilities, hospitality assets, and mixed-use developments. It includes Riyadh, Jeddah, the Eastern Province, and the new economic zones being built under Vision 2030.

The mismatch is obvious. Demand for commercial property among qualified Saudis is real and growing. The financing infrastructure to serve that demand is thin.

How the SAMA framework is changing things

This is where the 2026 picture starts to look different from the 2020 picture.

SAMA — the Saudi Central Bank — issued rules for debt-based crowdfunding (also called peer-to-peer financing) in late 2022 and refined them in 2024. The framework allows licensed companies to operate platforms that connect capital providers with borrowers, under specific regulatory conditions. Real estate activities sit under this framework, with certain exemptions and tailored provisions.

In plain language: SAMA created a legitimate, regulated path for marketplace-based real estate financing in Saudi Arabia. Not equity crowdfunding. Not unregulated peer-to-peer lending. A structured, supervised model with specific rules on disclosures, investor protections, concentration limits, and platform governance.

For individuals, this changed the math. A SAMA-regulated marketplace can do something a traditional bank cannot easily do — underwrite a single asset, structure the financing around it, connect multiple capital providers to a single deal, and deliver the whole thing digitally in a fraction of the time.

That is the lane SANAD operates in. We are not the only platform that exists under SAMA's framework, but we are the only one focused specifically on financing individuals into commercial real estate, as opposed to SMEs into working capital or businesses into invoice financing.

What a deal actually looks like

Here is the typical shape of a SANAD-financed commercial real estate transaction. The details vary, but the structure is consistent.

Step 1: The borrower identifies the asset. This is not us picking properties. The borrower — a qualified Saudi individual — has identified a specific commercial property they want to acquire. An office unit. A retail strip. A small warehouse. The asset is real, the seller is known, and the borrower has done the basic work of figuring out what it's worth.

Step 2: SANAD evaluates the asset and the borrower. We look at the property first. Is it income-generating? What are the existing leases? What is the tenancy mix? What's the realistic stabilized cash flow over the next 24 months? We then look at the borrower's profile — capacity, history, what they're bringing to the deal in terms of equity. The borrower matters, but the asset is the primary thing.

Step 3: The deal is structured around an SPV. A special-purpose vehicle is created to hold the property. The SPV is the legal entity that owns the asset. Capital providers fund the SPV. The borrower has rights to the SPV's economics — the rental income, the appreciation at exit, control of the operating decisions — but the asset itself sits inside the structure, not on the borrower's personal balance sheet.

This matters for a few reasons. It cleanly separates the asset from everything else. It makes the collateral position obvious — the SPV holds the property, so the property is the collateral. It makes the cash flow transparent, because the SPV's bank account is the only thing rent flows into. And it makes the exit cleaner, because the SPV can be sold, refinanced, or wound down without dragging other assets into the process.

Step 4: Capital providers fund the SPV. This is where the marketplace part comes in. Multiple qualified capital providers — family offices, high-net-worth individuals, qualified institutional participants — fund the SPV through the platform. Each one is taking a position in a single deal. They know what property they are funding, what the structure is, what the expected returns are.

Concentration limits apply. Disclosures are standardized. The SAMA framework requires specific protections, including caps on how much a non-qualified participant can deploy into a single deal and into the platform overall.

Step 5: The borrower draws and the asset is acquired. Once the SPV is funded, the acquisition closes. The borrower now has access to the property they wanted, financed through a structure designed around that specific asset, not through a one-size-fits-all loan.

Step 6: Servicing happens on-platform. Rent flows into the SPV. Distributions go to capital providers according to the structure. Reporting is continuous. The borrower has visibility into what is happening. Capital providers have visibility into what is happening. SANAD operates the platform, handles the administration, and reports to SAMA as required.

Step 7: Exit. Deals typically have a 24-month tenor. At maturity, the property is refinanced, sold, or held by the borrower outright depending on what they chose to do. Capital providers receive principal back plus their share of returns, which includes both the fixed coupon paid through the life of the deal and a share of appreciation realized at exit.

What this means for you as an individual

If you are a qualified Saudi individual thinking about acquiring commercial real estate in 2026, here is what changes when financing is structured this way.

First, speed. A traditional commercial financing process for an individual buyer can take six months from initial conversation to funding. A SAMA-regulated marketplace transaction can compress that to a fraction of that time, because the structure is standardized, the underwriting is asset-focused, and the platform operates digitally end-to-end.

Second, accessibility. You do not need to be a corporate. You do not need a complex business structure. You need to be a qualified Saudi individual with documented capacity, a specific asset in mind, and a realistic plan for what you want to do with the property.

Third, alignment. Because the financing is structured around the asset and capital providers participate in both the coupon and the appreciation, everyone in the deal is aligned around the same thing — the property performing well. The borrower wants it to perform because they own the rights to the upside. The capital providers want it to perform because their returns depend on it. There is no information asymmetry game being played.

Fourth, regulatory clarity. The SAMA framework is not a workaround. It is a regulated, supervised structure with specific rules, disclosures, and protections. That matters when you are deploying meaningful capital — yours or someone else's.

What to think about before you start

None of this is a recommendation for any specific transaction. But here are the questions worth thinking through before you start any commercial real estate financing process, whether through SANAD or through any other channel.

Do you actually want this property? Not the category. The specific asset. People who treat real estate as a portfolio allocation often end up with assets that look right on paper and underperform in practice. The investors and operators who consistently make money on commercial property are the ones who understand the specific asset they own.

Is the cash flow real? An income-generating property generates income today, not in projection. If you have to squint at the rent roll, the deal is harder than it looks.

What's your exit? 24 months is a horizon, not a holding period. By the time you fund the deal, you should already have a view on whether you want to refinance and hold, sell into the market, or restructure. Going into a transaction without that view is how people end up forced sellers.

How does this fit your overall situation? Commercial real estate has very different risk and liquidity characteristics from public-market investments. It is not a substitute for diversification. It is a position.

What happens if something goes wrong? Tenant defaults. Vacancy spikes. Market shifts. A good deal structure has answers to all of those before you fund. A bad one improvises when they happen.

What's next

Commercial real estate financing in Saudi Arabia is in the middle of a structural shift. The SAMA framework has unlocked a path that did not exist a few years ago. The Vision 2030 buildout is creating an asset pipeline at a scale the country has never seen. And qualified individuals — for the first time — have a legitimate, regulated way to participate in that pipeline directly, not just through funds or REITs or proxy exposure.

SANAD exists to make that participation real. The platform is built. The framework is in place. The market is here.

The infrastructure is being built. The bridge is what we provide.

If you want to be among the first qualified individuals to use the platform when it launches, you can join the waitlist at sanad.loan. We will not bury you in marketing emails. We will tell you when there are deals to look at, and that's it.

Peer-to-peer financing has a confusing reputation in Saudi Arabia. Most people who have heard the term associate it with international platforms — Lending Club, Funding Circle, the Western consumer lending boom of the 2010s. That association is unhelpful, because the Saudi version is not really the same animal.

Under SAMA's framework, peer-to-peer financing in Saudi Arabia is a regulated, supervised activity with specific rules about who can operate a platform, who can participate, how deals must be structured, and how disclosures must be made. It is closer in spirit to a regulated marketplace than to the early-stage, lightly-supervised P2P platforms that grew up elsewhere.

This article explains what that actually looks like — particularly for real estate financing, which is where SANAD operates.

The basics of how P2P real estate financing works

At the highest level, peer-to-peer real estate financing works like this. A borrower wants to finance the acquisition of a specific property. A platform — licensed and regulated — connects that borrower with multiple capital providers who collectively fund the deal. The financing is structured around the asset, not around a generalized lending pool. Each capital provider knows what they are funding.

That is the structural difference between a P2P real estate platform and a real estate fund. In a fund, capital is pooled and the fund manager picks the investments. In a P2P marketplace, capital is allocated to specific assets by the providers themselves, deal by deal.

There are advantages and trade-offs to both. Funds offer diversification by design and require less work from the capital provider. P2P marketplaces offer transparency, direct exposure to specific assets, and the ability to be selective. Different investors prefer different models.

SANAD is a P2P marketplace. We do not operate a fund. We connect qualified Saudi individuals — borrowers acquiring commercial real estate — with capital providers willing to finance specific deals on specific terms.

Why SAMA, and what that means

Debt-based crowdfunding in Saudi Arabia is regulated by SAMA. That is the relevant regulator for the kind of financing SANAD does — debt-based, secured against a real asset, with defined coupons and tenors. This is not a footnote. It is structural.

SAMA's framework requires platforms to be licensed before they operate. The licensing process includes scrutiny of the operating model, the financial position of the operator, the technology infrastructure, the underwriting approach, the risk management framework, and the team. Once licensed, platforms are supervised on an ongoing basis.

The framework also sets rules about who can participate. Non-qualified participants — retail investors — have caps on how much they can deploy into any single deal and into any single platform overall. Qualified participants — institutions, family offices, high-net-worth individuals meeting specific criteria — have more latitude.

There are also rules about concentration. A platform cannot allow any single capital provider to dominate the funding of a single deal. There are limits on the total exposure a participant can have to one borrower across the platform.

All of this exists to make the framework safer. The point is not to slow things down. The point is to prevent the kinds of failures that early international P2P platforms had — where due diligence was thin, disclosures were poor, concentration was extreme, and when defaults happened, retail investors got hurt disproportionately.

Regulation is not the opposite of innovation. In this case, it is the precondition for it.

How a SANAD deal is structured

Let's walk through a typical deal in some detail, because the structure is where the trust gets built.

A qualified Saudi individual approaches SANAD with a specific commercial property they want to acquire. Say it's a small office unit in a stabilized building in northern Riyadh, with existing tenants paying market rent, leases running another two to four years.

SANAD evaluates the deal across two dimensions. The asset — is the property income-generating, is the cash flow real, is the tenancy mix reasonable, what is the realistic value? The borrower — is this someone with the capacity to manage the asset, do they have skin in the game, is their profile consistent with what they say they want to do?

Assuming the deal passes underwriting, SANAD structures the financing. A special-purpose vehicle is established. The SPV will hold the property. The borrower has rights to the SPV's economics. SANAD acts as servicer.

The deal is then listed on the platform with full disclosures. Capital providers can review the asset, the structure, the terms, the borrower's profile (within privacy limits), the expected returns, the risks, and the projected cash flows. They make their own decision about whether to participate and at what size.

Once funding is committed, the SPV completes the acquisition. The property is now owned by the SPV, financed by the capital providers, with the borrower holding the operational and economic rights.

From there, the deal runs. Rent flows in monthly. Distributions go out to capital providers on the schedule defined in the deal terms. Reporting is continuous and on-platform. If anything material happens — a tenant leaving, a lease being renewed, a maintenance issue — capital providers are informed.

At exit, the SPV is unwound. The property is refinanced, sold, or transferred to the borrower outright. Capital providers receive their principal back plus the share of returns defined in the structure.

What capital providers should think about

If you are considering participating as a capital provider, here are the questions that actually matter.

What is the asset? Not the category. The specific property. Where is it. What does it generate. Who is leasing it. What is the realistic stabilized cash flow.

Who is the borrower? You will not get their full identity in most cases (privacy rules apply), but you should be able to see the profile — capacity, equity contribution, experience with similar assets.

What are the terms? Fixed coupon. Profit participation. Tenor. Repayment schedule. Reserve requirements. Default provisions. Read all of it before you fund anything.

What does the platform do if things go wrong? How are defaults handled. What's the workout process. Who decides when an asset needs to be sold. What protections do capital providers have if a deal underperforms.

How concentrated is your exposure? You should not have all of your real estate exposure in one platform, much less in one deal. The point of a marketplace is to pick deals selectively, not to substitute it for diversification.

What borrowers should think about

From the borrower's side, the questions are different.

Is this the right property? Are you committing to an asset you actually want to own, or are you reaching because the financing is available?

Can you service the deal? Coupons get paid whether the tenants pay or not, at least within the structure. You need to be honest with yourself about your capacity to absorb a short tenant gap or a maintenance surprise.

What's your exit? 24 months is not forever. You should know going in whether you want to refinance and hold, sell, or restructure.

What's your alternative? Sometimes the answer is to wait, save more equity, find a smaller property, or rent the space instead of buying. Marketplace financing is a tool, not a destination.

The honest case against P2P real estate financing

I want to be direct about this, because too many P2P platforms market themselves as if there is no downside.

Real estate is illiquid. Once you fund a deal, you cannot easily get out. Most platforms — including SANAD — do not offer secondary markets at scale. Your money is committed until the deal exits.

Defaults happen. Tenants leave. Markets shift. Assets underperform. A good platform has clear protocols for handling that, but no platform — and no investment — has zero default risk.

Returns are not guaranteed. The structure pays a fixed coupon, but if the asset materially underperforms, that coupon depends on the workout. The profit participation depends on the property appreciating, which it may or may not do.

Concentration matters. Putting too much of your real estate exposure into one platform — or one type of asset — is how people get hurt when something specific goes wrong.

The right way to think about P2P real estate financing is as one option in a broader allocation. Not the whole allocation. Not free money. A regulated, transparent, asset-backed path to participate in commercial property — with all the risks that real estate carries.

What's next under SAMA's framework

The regulatory framework is still evolving. SAMA has been actively refining rules around disclosures, investor protections, and operational requirements. The direction of travel is clear — toward more sophistication, not less. Toward broader participation by qualified individuals, not narrower.

Vision 2030 plays into this. The buildout of commercial real estate in Saudi Arabia over the next decade will require financing capacity at a scale that traditional bank balance sheets cannot fully absorb. SAMA understands this. The regulatory framework for marketplace-based financing is part of building that capacity.

SANAD is positioned to be one of the institutions that operates inside that framework. Built in Riyadh. Licensed under SAMA. Focused on the specific lane where the financing gap is largest — qualified individuals acquiring commercial property.

If you want to be part of the early cohort, you can join the waitlist at sanad.loan. We launch deals progressively, and early waitlist members get access to the first wave.

When people decide to invest in commercial real estate in Saudi Arabia, the first question they usually ask is the wrong one.

They ask: "Which type of property has the highest yield?"

That is the question the spreadsheets ask. It is not the question that gets you to a good outcome. The right question is: "Which type of property fits the way I actually want to operate as an owner over the next 24 to 60 months?"

There is a difference. Offices, retail, and warehouses each ask different things from their owners. They have different tenant dynamics, different operational rhythms, different risk profiles, and different exit paths. The highest-yield asset on paper is often the one that costs you the most in time, attention, and stress. The asset that fits your life and capacity tends to outperform the one that looks better on the spreadsheet.

This article walks through how to think about that fit. We will cover the three most common commercial property categories that qualified Saudi individuals consider for their first deal — offices, retail, and warehouses — and what each one actually demands.

Offices: the white-collar workhorse

Office property in Saudi Arabia has been on a remarkable run. Riyadh in particular has seen vacancy compress dramatically since 2022 as Vision 2030 has pulled regional headquarters into the country and as the broader services sector has expanded. Jeddah has its own dynamics, anchored more in trade, logistics, and tourism. The Eastern Province has corporate demand driven by Aramco's ecosystem and the broader industrial base.

As an asset class, offices reward owners who can pick locations well. A B-grade office in a top-tier district often outperforms an A-grade office in a marginal one. The reason is that office tenants are generally more sensitive to address than to the building itself. They want to be near their clients, near their talent pool, near the metro, near the airport. Buildings matter, but the location matters more.

Office tenants tend to sign longer leases — typically three to five years for serious tenants. That stability is valuable. Once you have a tenant locked in at market rent, your cash flow is predictable for years. The risk is concentration. If a single tenant occupies most of your floor area and they leave, you face an extended vacancy and a potentially significant re-tenanting cost.

Office property rewards location selection. Get the address right, and time tends to be on your side.

For a first investment, the things to look for are: a stabilized building with multiple existing tenants, leases with reasonable remaining terms (avoid buildings where most leases roll within 12 months), tenants you understand (avoid sectors you cannot evaluate), and a location you genuinely believe in for the next five years, not just the next twenty-four months.

Retail: the foot-traffic business

Retail real estate in Saudi Arabia has been more complicated. The sector has split into two very different stories.

On one side, you have the destination retail that benefits from rising domestic consumption and tourism. Mixed-use developments in central Riyadh and Jeddah. The retail components of the new entertainment and cultural districts. Convenience retail in dense residential areas where the population is young and spending.

On the other side, you have legacy retail in older districts and smaller cities, which has been struggling against changing consumer habits, e-commerce growth, and the rising appeal of newer destinations. Some of it will adapt. Some of it will not.

As an owner, retail is operationally heavier than office property. Tenants ask more of you — common areas, signage, occasional disputes, lease structures that often include percentage rent tied to sales. The lease terms tend to be shorter than office, especially for smaller tenants. Tenant turnover is higher. When a unit goes dark, you tend to feel it faster than you would in an office building.

The upside is that retail in the right location can compound faster than office property, because foot traffic is a function of both location and timing. A retail strip in a district that grows around it ends up with rent escalations that an office building simply cannot match.

Warehouses: the unglamorous compounder

Warehouse and logistics property has been the quietly outperforming category in Saudi Arabia. As the country has built out its logistics infrastructure under Vision 2030, as Saudi-based e-commerce has grown, and as regional supply chains have rebased, demand for warehouse space — especially well-located, modern facilities — has stayed strong.

Warehouses are the easiest commercial property to own, in a sense. The buildings are simple. The tenants are typically logistics companies, distributors, or industrial operators who treat the space as a tool and not as a brand environment. They sign multi-year leases, they pay on time, and they do not generate the day-to-day operational drama that retail can.

The complication is that warehouse investment is location-sensitive in a different way than office or retail. You need proximity to the right roads. You need proximity to ports, industrial zones, or distribution corridors. You need adequate truck access, loading dock specifications, and ceiling heights that match modern logistics requirements. A warehouse in the wrong location with the wrong specs is hard to lease at any rent.

Yields on warehouses tend to be moderate but stable. You will not get the speculative appreciation that a well-located office in a transforming district might deliver. You will get steady cash flow, long lease terms, and tenants who tend to stay because moving warehouse operations is expensive and disruptive.

How to actually choose

Forget the yield comparison for a second and ask yourself three questions.

How much time can you realistically give this property each month? If the answer is "a few hours," warehouses or smaller office buildings are easier. If the answer is "I want to be operationally involved," retail or mixed-use offers more leverage.

What's your tolerance for tenant churn? Higher churn means more cash flow volatility but also more upside if you can re-let well. Lower churn means more predictability but less opportunity to mark rent to market.

What's your exit horizon? If you want to refinance and hold for the long term, location-driven assets (office, mixed-use in growing districts) reward patience. If you want to sell within 24-48 months, you need an asset that's attractive to the next buyer at your exit point — which usually means stabilized cash flow and a clean operational story.

And one final question, the one that matters most: do you actually want to own this asset? Not the abstract idea of "a commercial property." The specific one.

Where SANAD fits

SANAD finances all of these categories — offices, retail, warehouses, clinics, education, hospitality, and mixed-use — provided the asset is stabilized and income-generating. We do not finance greenfield development. We do not finance speculation.

Our role is to make the financing structure match the asset. A 24-month tenor, asset-backed via SPV, with hybrid returns that combine a fixed coupon with profit participation at exit. SAMA-regulated, fully digital, structured to compress the financing cycle from months to days.

The choice of which category to invest in is yours. SANAD's job is to make sure that once you have made that choice, the financing path is clean.

If you have spent any time researching real estate financing in the past few years, you have probably come across the term "SPV" — special-purpose vehicle.

The term gets used freely in finance circles, in legal documents, in marketing materials, often without explanation. People assume you know what it means. Most people do not. Or they have a vague sense that it is a legal structure of some kind, used to ring-fence something, without a clear picture of what it actually does.

This article is the explanation. By the end of it, you should understand what an SPV is in a real estate context, why investors and borrowers use them, what specifically they protect against, and why SAMA-regulated marketplaces in Saudi Arabia rely on them. It is written for the qualified Saudi individual who wants to participate in commercial real estate financing — as an investor or a borrower — and wants to actually understand the structures being used.

Start with the basic idea

A special-purpose vehicle is a legal entity created for a specific, narrow purpose. In real estate, the purpose is usually to own a single property. That is it. The SPV does not run other businesses. It does not own other assets. It does not have employees doing unrelated things. It exists to hold one piece of real estate and to handle the cash flow and ownership rights associated with that property.

Think of it like a clean container. The container exists to hold one specific thing, and to keep that thing separate from everything else.

In Saudi Arabia, an SPV in a real estate context is typically structured as a limited liability company (LLC). The LLC is incorporated specifically to own the property. Its shareholders are the parties with rights to the property's economics — typically the borrower, the capital providers, or both depending on the deal structure.

Why use an SPV at all? Three reasons

There are three substantive reasons that SPVs are the dominant structure in commercial real estate financing globally and in Saudi Arabia.

1. Separation of risk. If the property is owned by the SPV, and the SPV does nothing else, then the property's risks are contained inside the SPV. If something goes wrong with the property — a tenant defaults, a major maintenance issue, a legal dispute — it stays inside the SPV. It does not contaminate the rest of the borrower's life or the other investments of the capital providers. The same is true in reverse. If the borrower runs into personal financial trouble, the property inside the SPV is not automatically pulled into that situation.

2. Clarity of collateral. When the SPV owns the property, and capital providers fund the SPV, the collateral position is unambiguous. The SPV holds the property. The property is the security. There is no question about what the lenders' claim is — it is on the SPV's assets, which means the property.

3. Transparency of cash flow. The SPV has its own bank account. Rent flows in. Operating expenses flow out. Distributions to capital providers and to the borrower flow out on the schedule defined by the deal structure. The whole financial life of the property is contained in one set of books. This is essential for the kind of continuous reporting that a SAMA-regulated marketplace needs to provide.

What an SPV is not

Some misconceptions worth clearing up.

An SPV is not a tax shelter. It is not a way to avoid taxes that would otherwise be due. Properties owned through SPVs pay the same taxes as properties owned directly.

An SPV is not a way to hide ownership. Beneficial ownership of an SPV is recorded and reportable. Saudi regulators — including SAMA, the Ministry of Commerce, and ZATCA — can see who ultimately owns and benefits from the SPV.

An SPV does not, by itself, guarantee good outcomes. The structure is a tool. The deal still has to be a good deal. The property still has to perform.

How SANAD uses SPVs

Every SANAD-financed deal is structured around an SPV. Here is what that looks like in practice.

When a qualified Saudi borrower wants to acquire a specific commercial property, we incorporate an SPV — typically a single-purpose LLC — to be the vehicle that will own the property. The borrower has rights to the SPV's economics. Capital providers fund the SPV. The acquisition closes with the SPV as the owner of record.

The SPV has its own bank account. Rent flows in. SANAD acts as servicer, managing the operational cash flow and distributions according to the structure of the deal. Capital providers see continuous reporting through the platform. The borrower has visibility into all of it.

At exit — typically after a 24-month tenor — the SPV is either sold to a new owner, refinanced, or transferred fully to the borrower.

What investors and borrowers should ask

If you are looking at any real estate financing deal that uses an SPV, ask: Who owns the SPV? Who controls it operationally? What is the SPV's debt structure? What happens at exit? What happens if there is a dispute?

The bottom line

SPVs are not exotic. They are the standard, sensible way to structure ownership of a single real estate asset in a way that's clean, transparent, and properly separated from the rest of the parties' financial lives.

SANAD builds every transaction around an SPV. That is not because the structure is fashionable. It is because the structure is correct.

Vision 2030 is a strange thing to write about. It is so big, so referenced, so present in every conversation about the Saudi economy, that it is easy to drift into platitudes. "Vision 2030 is transformative." "Vision 2030 is unlocking opportunities." These statements are technically true and substantively meaningless.

So let me try to write about it in a way that is actually useful. Specifically, I want to talk about what Vision 2030 means for commercial real estate in Saudi Arabia — not as a marketing concept, but as a concrete set of changes happening in cities, in districts, in buildings, and in the financing structures that support them.

What Vision 2030 actually does for real estate

Strip away the slogans, and Vision 2030 does a few specific things that change the commercial real estate market.

It moves population and economic activity. The giga-projects — NEOM, the Red Sea Project, Diriyah, Qiddiya — are pulling capital, talent, and infrastructure into specific geographies. The new economic cities are doing the same. Riyadh itself is being remade as a regional headquarters destination, with the Regional Headquarters Program pulling multinational corporations into the country and concentrating them in specific districts.

It builds physical infrastructure. The Riyadh Metro. The expansion of King Salman International Airport. Highway upgrades. Logistics corridors. Power and water capacity expansions. Each of these reshapes which locations are valuable for commercial real estate, because every commercial property's value depends on the infrastructure that surrounds it.

It creates demand for commercial space. New regional headquarters need offices. New entertainment districts need retail. New logistics corridors need warehouses. New hospitality destinations need hotels and serviced apartments. New residential zones need supporting retail and services. The buildout creates space, and the activity it generates fills that space.

It pulls capital into the country. Foreign direct investment targets, the public investment fund's local allocation, the regional headquarters tax incentives — these all bring capital that needs to be deployed, and a significant share of it ends up in real estate either directly or indirectly.

The numbers that actually matter

Saudi banks' real estate lending crossed SAR 883 billion by the end of 2024. That includes both residential and commercial, but it gives a sense of scale. Real estate is a substantial slice of Saudi banking activity.

The commercial real estate market in Saudi Arabia — covering offices, retail, warehouses, hospitality, and mixed-use — is widely estimated at SAR 280 billion or more in financing addressable demand. Reasonable people disagree on the exact number. What everyone agrees on is that it is large and growing.

Riyadh office vacancy has compressed to below 5 percent for Grade A space, with Grade B following close behind. Rents have risen 30 to 50 percent in the past three years depending on submarket. Jeddah and the Eastern Province have followed similar patterns, with different submarket dynamics.

The pipeline of new commercial supply is significant. Riyadh alone has multiple millions of square meters of office, retail, and mixed-use coming online in the next three to five years. Whether that pipeline meets demand, exceeds it, or falls short will define a lot of what the market looks like in 2030.

How Vision 2030 changes the financing landscape

The buildout creates a financing problem. Commercial real estate at this scale needs financing structures that the traditional bank-led model is not fully built for.

Banks have balance sheets, but balance sheets have limits. Capital adequacy ratios, single-borrower exposure limits, sector concentration rules — all of these mean that even large Saudi banks cannot single-handedly absorb the commercial real estate financing demand that Vision 2030 is generating.

Sukuk markets have grown substantially, but sukuk are best suited for large transactions and well-known issuers. Real estate funds have multiplied, but funds aggregate capital into portfolios; they do not provide financing to individual buyers acquiring specific assets.

This is the gap. As Vision 2030 generates more and more commercial real estate, there has been no mainstream financing structure designed for individuals buying commercial property at scale.

That is where SAMA's regulatory framework for marketplace-based financing comes in. By creating a supervised, transparent structure for connecting capital providers with borrowers around specific assets, the framework opens a financing lane that did not exist a few years ago. SANAD operates inside that lane.

Which Vision 2030 themes matter most for commercial real estate

Riyadh as regional headquarters: The Regional Headquarters Program has concentrated demand for high-quality office space in specific Riyadh districts. The investment implication is: "the right office in the right Riyadh district is in the path of an institutional demand wave."

Logistics and supply chain reshoring: The buildout of port capacity and distribution networks is creating demand for modern warehouse space at scale. Riyadh, Jeddah, and the Eastern Province all have significant warehouse demand drivers.

Tourism and entertainment: The opening of Saudi Arabia to international tourism and the development of entertainment districts are reshaping retail and hospitality real estate. The destination retail story is real.

Mixed-use district development: The new districts being built are predominantly mixed-use. As these districts mature, the commercial components within them become increasingly valuable.

The risks worth being honest about

This is not a one-way bet. Supply timing is a risk: if new commercial space comes online faster than demand absorbs it, rents soften. Concentration in Riyadh means geographic diversification is harder. Macro environment factors like global interest rates and oil prices influence the real estate market. Finally, liquidity is always a factor: commercial real estate is illiquid. You need to plan for that illiquidity.

How SANAD fits into all of this

SANAD is built for the specific intersection where Vision 2030's commercial real estate buildout meets the financing capacity gap for qualified individuals.

We do not develop property. We do not own assets. We operate a SAMA-regulated marketplace where qualified Saudi borrowers identify specific commercial properties they want to acquire, capital providers evaluate those deals individually, and the financing is structured around each asset.

What to do with all of this

First, understand the macro picture, but make specific decisions. Vision 2030 is the wind. The specific asset, location, and structure are the sail. Both matter, but the sail is what catches the wind.

Second, do not wait for perfection. The window for participating in this cycle is open now. Capital that sits on the sidelines waiting for the perfect entry tends to miss the entry entirely.

Third, plan for the long term. Vision 2030's commercial real estate story is a decade-plus story, not a 24-month story. Your overall positioning in commercial real estate should be thought of in terms of years and cycles, not single transactions.

If you want to be part of the early cohort using SANAD when the platform launches, join the waitlist at sanad.loan. We will be in touch when there are deals worth your attention.