Giga-project Roshn says most sales made via app
- Online Team
- Jan 12
- 3 min read
The Roshn giga-project, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest developers, now sells most of its units through its mobile application, the latest sign of growth in app-based property transactions in the region.
App accounts for 78% of deals
Purchases without human interaction
3,400 Roshn units sold through app
The developer, which is backed by the $930 billion Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), said 78 percent of deals in 2025 occurred via its Roshn Tech app. The software allows Roshn homes to be purchased with no human interaction, although many buyers still opt to speak with a sales representative or visit a show home.
“Everything happens digitally,” director of emerging technologies Yazeed Alghamdi said.
Developers and brokers in the GCC have generally struggled to introduce app-based sales. Big developers such as Emaar and Damac have launched their own apps in recent years, although Alghamdi said Roshn was the first company in the region to digitise the entire process.
“Today our customers can go and buy their units through this platform, do the transactions in terms of a payment, reserving the unit, signing the SPAs [sales and purchase agreements] and the unit reservation forms as well,” he said.
He said Roshn, which has ambitions to develop 400,000 units across the country, had sold 3,400 units, worth more than SAR7 billion ($1.9 billion), via its app. The app will soon be developed to support mortgage applications, Alghamdi added.
In June last year, Emaar, the largest master developer in the UAE, launched the Vyom app to sell property in the Emirates and Egypt.
The previous month, Dubai-based developer Damac launched its Damac360 app, designed for brokers and sales agents. However, neither app can facilitate the entire process of buying an apartment.
Challenges for developers
To make buying property “as easy as booking a flight”, in the words of Robert Hoban, CEO of Offr.io, poses many challenges for developers and brokers.
Offr, an Irish startup founded in 2019 with ambitions to create a streamlined process for sellers and buyers, is now active in Ireland, the UK and South Africa, but has been unable to move the entire purchasing process online.
“From a seller’s point of view, they want the transactions completed quicker, and from a buyer’s point of view they want the transaction to complete quicker,” said Keeshan Pillay, CEO of UK real estate consultancy KLAP Property Group. “The biggest hurdle in property is the conveyancing.”
Legal procedures
Depending on local legislation, property sales can involve a long list of legal procedures, particularly on the secondary market, slowing transactions and increasing the likelihood that a sale will fall through. In Pillay’s estimation, these legal issues pose the biggest challenge to app-based sales.
Gulf authorities want to streamline and digitalise as much of this process as possible. The Dubai Land Department now facilitates off-plan sales of property, with transactions potentially taking minutes, through its REST application.
“But it still involves all the parties getting in there,” said Zhann Jochinke, COO of UAE real estate data platform Property Monitor. “I would say more than 95 percent of buyers [who purchase through REST] will have been to see the property.”
Beyond off-plan sales, purchasing property becomes much more complicated. The legal procedures involved with buying housing on the secondary market may preclude mobile transactions, Jochinke said, even if buyers want to take that path.
“The biggest challenge that they’ll have for anyone that’s trying to build this towards the mass market is in the completed properties,” he said, “where it’s more of an emotional transaction”.
As Gulf developers push for more digitalised sales services, Jochinke said: “We’ll continue to see that rise and it will make the journey smoother and more efficient. But does it disrupt the market? No, it just adds to the facilitation of what’s already happening.”
By Edmund Bower
January 12, 2026, 4:08 PM
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