RIYADH — Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 provided a roadmap for the Real Estate Development Fund (REDF) to address the most complicated challenges in the development process of the fund for over 40 years, said General Supervisor of the REDF Mansour Bin Madi. He said that among the challenges that faced the fund prior to the announcement of the vision were long waiting lists. "There were more than 480,000 beneficiaries whose waiting period ranged between 12 to 15 years to receive the housing subsidy, not to mention the rights of future generation to housing," praising the role of the vision in resetting the strategy and goals of the fund. In this regard, the fund launched the real estate loan program with a subsidy of up to 100 percent and housing and finance options in a transitional phase characterized by ease in partnership with the housing system and the private sector, which contributed to the change in its work model and the announcement of the zero waiting list early in 2020. Bin Madi also noted that the Saudi Vision 2030 has realized achievements in various sectors, including REDF, which is considered a development arm for the housing sector in the Kingdom. Since the announcement of the transition in June 2017 up until the first quarter of 2021, the fund empowered around 500,000 Saudi families in various regions of Saudi Arabia, compared to 860,000 beneficiaries over 40 years of its establishment, stressing that receiving the housing subsidy as part of the "subsidized loan" has become instant after waiting periods for citizens used to reach up to 15 years. He pointed out that the transitional process to realize the goals of the 2020 Housing Program, one of the programs of the Saudi Vision 2030, aimed at increasing ownership of citizens to 70 percent and achievements over the past five years were unprecedented, where the fund managed to develop effective financing programs and solutions that contributed to increasing the housing ownership of citizens from 47 percent in 2016 to 60 percent by the end of 2020, exceeding the target by 8 percent. The general supervisor noted that the "subsidized loan" is considered a qualitative leap in the history of REDF, reiterating the importance of depositing the monthly subsidy, where the fund offered beneficiaries of the housing loans with some SR27 million as profits for contracts of the subsidized loan between June 2017 and the end of the first quarter of 2021. Bin Madi also reviewed the top achievements in the field of urban development, where the fund enabled more than 1.3 million families to own houses in all regions of Saudi Arabia since its inception. The ambitious Vision 2030 in early 2017 had a positive impact on the real estate sector with the market registering a 300 percent hike by the end of 2020. During this period, the share of the REDF from subsidized real estate finance went up from 7 percent in 2017 to 94 percent by the end of 2020, noting that the fund has offered all its services electronically through providing more than 43 e-services, in addition to the self-service devices at branches and the "real estate adviser" platform and application that seek to enable citizens to complete procedures to receive the subsidized finance at any time without limitations of time and place under highly accurate electronic operations. The general supervisor also said that the ambitious vision of Saudi Arabia has addressed, through sectors, the challenges that faced the fund through close follow-ups from its board of directors under the chairmanship of the Minister of Municipal, Rural Affairs and Housing, Majid Al-Hoqail, making a success story that formed a source of pride to the entire homeland. He noted that the fund has embarked on a new phase of its development process after the Council of Ministers approved its new bylaw that granted more authorities to the fund to keep pace with the development and prosperity phase witnessed in the Kingdom, considering REDF a main element in the urban development that Saudi Arabia has witnessed over the past four decades.
