Owners’ Associations in Saudi Arabia: The REGA Rules

A Saudi developer who has just handed over the second unit in a new project has, without necessarily realizing it, started a legal clock. Under the Law of Ownership, Subdivision and Management of Real Estate Units (Royal Decree No. M/85 of 2/7/1441H), once three or more owners hold subdivided units in a shared property, they must form an owners’ association and register it with the Real Estate General Authority (REGA). In an off-plan project sold unit by unit, that trigger is not the building’s completion date — it is the moment handover of the second subdivided unit begins.

Three owners, not a building size, is the trigger

The obligation does not turn on how many units a tower has. A 60-unit building still wholly owned by its developer carries no obligation at all, because there are not yet three separate owners. A four-unit building with three owners sold off, on the other hand, is already inside the regime. For a developer running a phased sales programme, that means the association clock can start well before the project is fully sold out, and well before the developer has stopped actively managing the building.

The 30-day registration window, and what legal personality actually means

Once the association is formed, whoever applied to form it — the owners, or their representative — has 30 days to apply for registration with REGA; if nobody does, any single owner may apply instead. The application has to include the owners’ data, the property’s National Address, its title-deed number and its number in the real-estate register, the by-laws, and the names of the general-assembly members at the time of registration.

Registration is not a formality that follows on from an association’s existence. Under the law, the association only gains legal personality — and its own separate financial liability — once it is registered. Before that, it cannot hold its own bank account or sue or be sued as an association. And ownership itself carries no opt-out: buying a subdivided unit in a building that already has a registered association is, by the text of the law, itself acceptance of that association’s by-laws and every resolution its general assembly passes.

Everything runs through Mullak, REGA’s own platform

REGA runs Mullak, the state system for owners’ associations, and describes its own services as delivered electronically end to end: association registration, joining as a member (verified against the title deed), electing the chairman, appointing the property manager, approving the by-laws, uploading and approving the meeting minutes, and voting on and approving the service-charge invoices. The by-laws themselves are approved at formation by both the members and REGA, and can only be amended later with REGA’s approval. Mullak is REGA’s platform, not a piece of software any developer or vendor operates — a building’s association, its manager and its owners are the ones who use it directly.

What actually changes for the developer: the first-manager rule

The one lever the law hands the developer directly is the right to appoint the building’s first property manager without a vote — and it comes with two conditions that both have to hold. The building needs at least 100 subdivided units, and the developer has to keep ownership of at least 10% of them. Below either threshold, the chairman nominates three candidate managers and the owners vote; a majority decides. For a large phased project this is a real advantage: it lets a developer install continuity of management from handover through to full sellout, rather than handing that decision to a general assembly assembled from a partial set of owners in year one.

Collecting on what the association is owed

The part of the law that makes an association’s finances more than a spreadsheet is article 21. Once REGA has approved them, the property manager’s decisions and the contracts he signs on the association’s behalf become an enforceable instrument against the owners under the Enforcement Law — meaning an unpaid service charge does not need its own lawsuit before it can be pursued. All of the association’s money, meanwhile, has to sit in a single bank account held in the association’s own name at a bank licensed in the Kingdom, and buildings of 100 units or more — or associations holding more than SAR 1,000,000 — need a licensed auditor before the general assembly can validly approve the manager’s annual report.

What the law does not settle

Two things are worth a developer’s attention precisely because REGA has not settled them. First, nothing in the law or its regulation sets a licensing standard for the property manager — REGA’s own pages disagree with each other, one naming a “FAL” property-management licence and another naming a certificate from the Saudi Real Estate Institute. Second, neither the law nor the regulation says anything about electronic voting for the general assembly; REGA’s Mullak platform runs voting and minutes electronically as a matter of practice, but the statute itself leaves quorum and convening procedure to each association’s own by-laws, which REGA approves.

Sources: Law of Ownership, Subdivision and Management of Real Estate Units, Royal Decree No. M/85 of 2/7/1441H, and its Executive Regulation, Ministerial Decision No. 168 of 22/10/1441H, as amended, both published by the Real Estate General Authority (REGA) at rega.gov.sa; REGA’s Mullak programme and service pages, rega.gov.sa/rega-services/platforms/mullak/, accessed 2026-09-07.