Is there a bubble in Saudi real estate? evidence from the stock market

Abstract EN

This paper analyzes the real estate price data in Saudi Arabia, a country not suspected of experiencing a price bubble, but where restrictive land ownership rights are similar with other countries in the GCC.

A crucial difference however, is that Saudi Arabia is a vast country when compared with land-tight neighbors such the UAE and Qatar, and where the existence of price bubbles in real estate are not in question.

Specifically, our study tries to answer the following questions : is there any evidence of a price bubble in real estate valuations in Saudi Arabia between 2002 and 2010? How did the real estate valuations compare with those in the stock market? Were the real estate valuations justified in relation to the company earnings?