Saudi Arabia’s real estate and construction sectors are undergoing one of the most ambitious transformations in the world. Giga-projects, new urban districts, and massive infrastructure programs are reshaping the physical environment at an unprecedented pace. Alongside this expansion, the Kingdom is also building the digital foundations that will support a more connected, efficient, and technology-enabled built environment.
Among the most promising areas of progress and challenge is data integration. The Kingdom already possesses a substantial amount of real estate, geospatial, and regulatory data. What remains is connecting it in ways that enable automation, improve decision-making, and accelerate the adoption of new PropTech solutions.
This emerging landscape was clearly illustrated through NeoCity’s recent PoCs, particularly with startups like Algoma and Rewa, whose work offers a practical view into how data integration can support the next phase of the Kingdom’s smart-city ambitions.
Zoning & Land-Use: A Growing Opportunity for Standardization
Zoning and land-use regulations sit at the heart of any development process. They determine what can be built, where it can be built, and under which constraints. For feasibility and planning tools, structured zoning data is the backbone that allows platforms to automate design generation, massing, and financial modeling.
In many global markets, such data is centralized and delivered through consistent, machine-readable APIs. In practice, this means a feasibility tool can retrieve zoning layers, parcel boundaries, floor-area ratios, height limits, and development guidelines in seconds enabling nearly instantaneous analysis.
Saudi Arabia is still in the process of building toward this level of consolidation, but the foundations are already in place. Valuable datasets exist across several platforms, including SDAIA’s open-data portals, municipal GIS systems, regional planning authorities, developers’ archives, and REGA’s real estate indicators. Each source contains important pieces of the zoning and planning landscape.
The challenge is not a lack of data; rather, it is the absence of a unified structure that allows these datasets to communicate with one another. Today, developers often work with zoning information in PDFs, geospatial layers, or internal documents that vary from one municipality to the next. For a feasibility engine like Algoma’s, this means much of the work still needs to be done manually, inputting plot boundaries, constraints, and development assumptions directly from the partner’s internal records.
While this approach enables progress, it also highlights where the greatest opportunity lies. Standardizing zoning parameters, unifying parcel identifiers, and adopting machine-readable planning rules would enable platforms like Algoma to automate much more of the feasibility process. The PoC demonstrated the adaptability of the platform to local conditions, but also showed how national-level data integration can unlock even greater speed and accuracy across the industry.
Rental Data: Strong Momentum With Clear Paths Forward
While the zoning landscape is still maturing, the rental sector demonstrates more immediate readiness for large-scale digital integration. The Kingdom has already made meaningful progress through systems such as Ejar, which hosts millions of verified leases, and REGA’s rental indices, which provide market insights across different regions.
Rewa’s PoC highlighted this momentum. By connecting developer CRM data with existing rental insights, Rewa demonstrated how more granular analytics can emerge from the combination of public and private datasets. These integrations can help developers better understand tenant behavior, measure loyalty, and identify rental trends more accurately.
The progress in rental data shows that the Kingdom is well-positioned to move toward standardized data pathways, such as unified rental APIs, that can make these insights easier to access for both government entities and private developers. Encouragingly, steps in this direction are already underway, indicating a broader shift toward interoperability across the real estate ecosystem.
What the PoCs Revealed
The PoCs conducted under NeoCity’s program provided practical insights into how data integration can accelerate innovation.
For Algoma, adapting its global engine to the Saudi context required rebuilding certain datasets manually. This challenge ultimately became an opportunity: it allowed the startup to gain a deeper understanding of local development conditions and to build a version of its engine tailored specifically to the Kingdom’s unique regulatory and market environment.
For Rewa, the experience showed how rental behavior, ownership patterns, and loyalty data can be combined to create richer, more actionable insights. The PoC demonstrated that even without fully standardized integrations, meaningful progress can be made through collaboration between developers and government-backed systems.
Both cases illustrate how the future of Saudi PropTech will depend not only on new technologies, but also on strengthening the data pathways that make those technologies scalable.
Looking Ahead
Saudi Arabia’s vision for digital transformation is ambitious and well-supported by ongoing national initiatives. As the built environment grows more complex, the role of data integration will become increasingly central to ensuring efficiency, sustainability, and informed decision-making across the sector.
The Kingdom has already built strong pillars. The next step is connecting them. With unified data standards, PropTech solutions will operate with greater accuracy and speed, developers will be able to make faster and better-informed decisions, and the ecosystem as a whole will benefit from smoother, more transparent workflows.
Saudi Arabia is well-positioned to lead the region and potentially the world in this direction. The path forward is clear, and the momentum is already underway.
