Residential mortgage financing in Saudi Arabia jumped by more than a quarter in the first half of the year even as new lending slowed in the second quarter, central bank data showed.

Saudi banks and financial institutions lent SR79 billion for residential mortgages in the first six months of 2021, up from SR62.1 billion in the same period last year, SAMA said in its monthly bulletin. The number of transactions increased 14.2 percent to 153,054 in the period.

The value of mortgages provided in the second quarter slid to SR31.1 billion riyals from SR49 billion in the first quarter as the supply of new properties fell amid changes to the building code.

"The number of contracts increased in the first half, but temporarily decreased in the past three months, but due to the reorganization of property evaluation by the Real Estate Fund, and the application of the new Saudi building code with the temporary ambiguity until it is well understood, and the lack of supply of ready housing units,” Mohamed AlKhars, a member of the housing program advisory board and the chairman of Innovest Property Co. told Arab News.

"I expect the volume of financing and the number of contracts to gradually increase in the fourth quarter of 2021,” he said.

Financing for villas accounted for 80 percent of residential real estate loans in the first half of the year, with 15.9 percent for apartments and the remainder for land, the SAMA data showed.

"Villas are still more desired by citizens and more available in the market, and apartment supply is still low now, as the developers are still focusing on building villas due to low interest in apartments which might continue for a while,” AlKhars said.

The mortgage market has seen stratospheric growth since SAMA began collecting the data in 2016 when a total of 22,259 real estate loans were issued. In 2019, that number jumped to 179,220 from 50,496 the previous year, before reaching 295,590 in 2020.