JLL Sold Antara as Diriyah Split Into Two Housing Bets

JLL Capital Markets advised a Saudi fund on the sale of Antara Residential Compound, a 520-home gated community in Diriyah, North Riyadh, in July 2025. The buyer was not named. Neither was the price.

The deal was sold as proof of appetite for Saudi housing. The sharper result sits in the ground around it. Antara is a rented, already occupied compound. Diriyah Gate to the south and New Murabba to the north are building for-sale districts that now sit on the foreign-ownership map. One corridor, two products.

A 520-Home Lot in Diriyah Changed Hands

JLL was the exclusive sell-side advisor on the sale, which it announced on 27 July 2025. The firm ran an institutional campaign aimed at pre-qualified bidders and called the result one of the largest residential deals in Riyadh that year. Hourani and Partners acted as the seller’s legal counsel.

The compound mixes apartments, townhouses and villas and was marketed as an expatriate address with food outlets, sports kit, gardens and a events calendar. JLL said occupancy was high and stable, with a mixed tenant base and lean operations. Fadi Moussalli, Senior Director for Capital Markets MENA at JLL, tied the bid interest to how the asset had been run.

We are delighted to have successfully supported our client on this strategic transaction, which generated strong market interest and testifies to our client’s outstanding asset management capability.

Fadi Moussalli, Senior Director, Capital Markets MENA, JLL

Saud Alsulaimani, Country Lead and Head of Capital Markets for Saudi Arabia at JLL, called it a bid for quality income property in a thin prime stock. He did not name the purchaser. No filing published a figure. That silence still holds.

THE SALE IN FOUR POINTS

• The lot: 520 apartments, townhouses and villas in Diriyah, North Riyadh.
• The seller: a Saudi Arabia-based fund advised by JLL Capital Markets.
• The process: a closed institutional auction with several pre-qualified bidders.
• The gaps: buyer identity and sale price were never disclosed.

What changed hands was not a plot or a tower. It was a working rental machine, already leased, already staffed, sitting in the gap between two of the city’s largest building sites.

Gulf Related Put SAR 1 Billion Into the Site

Gulf Related, a partnership of UAE firm Gulf Capital and New York’s Related Companies, was the development manager. On 1 September 2020 it opened the gates and billed a SAR 1 billion investment in Antara (about $267 million). Dr. Karim El Solh, then co-managing partner of Gulf Related and chief executive of Gulf Capital, called it the group’s sixth major Saudi bet.

Kenneth Himmel, co-managing partner of Gulf Related and chief executive of Related Urban, said more than 100 homes were already leased at opening. JLL’s 2025 sale note listed the compound as completed in 2022, which reads as the finish of build-out after that first opening, not a second launch. Almost five years separated the first move-ins from the auction.

ANTARA FROM OPENING TO SALE

1. 1 September 2020: Gulf Related opens 520 homes in Diriyah, with more than 100 units already leased.
2. 2022: JLL later records the compound as completed, with occupancy described as high and stable.
3. 27 July 2025: JLL announces the sale for a Saudi fund after a competitive institutional process.
4. 13 October 2025: the operator publishes a maintenance overhaul that tags 45,000 assets.
5. January 2026: Saudi Arabia’s non-Saudi property law takes effect.
6. 23 June 2026: the cabinet approves the geographic zones, listing Diriyah Gate and New Murabba.

Jerry Inzerillo, then chief executive of the Diriyah Gate Development Authority, welcomed the 2020 opening inside a 190-square-kilometre catchment. The same executive later ran Diriyah Company as it sold branded homes and raised bank lines for more of them. The compound he once greeted as a neighbour is now a traded income asset beside his for-sale city.

Between New Murabba and Diriyah Gate

JLL placed Antara in Diriyah with New Murabba to the north and Diriyah Gate to the south, and close to King Abdullah Financial District, King Khalid International Airport and central Riyadh. That sandwich is the whole location story. One side is a PIF downtown still stretching toward 2040. The other is a 14-square-kilometre heritage city that is already handing over homes.

Diriyah Company has said it is building 18,000 homes for about 100,000 residents. In August 2026 it signed a SAR 2 billion ($533 million) facility with Arab National Bank for branded residences in Diriyah and Wadi Safar. Inzerillo has described a 300-plus branded-home book as the front of that larger plan. First residential units were due in 2026. Antara’s 520 rented homes are a rounding error next to that pipeline, and they are a different product: leases, gates, a village centre, no hotel brand on the door.

THREE DIRIYAH-CORRIDOR HOUSING BETS

The table is the second-order point in numbers. A bidder for Antara bought cash flow from people already living there. A buyer in Diriyah Gate is underwriting a masterplan. A New Murabba apartment, if and when it is delivered, is a downtown unit on a longer clock. Same north-west of Riyadh. Three different risks.

Where Foreign Buyers Are Allowed to Own

The sale closed before non-Saudis could freely hold title in the capital’s named zones. Cabinet approved the new law in July 2025. It took effect in January 2026. The maps that make the right usable were approved on 23 June 2026. JLL’s Rana Mira wrote in September 2026 that the foreign ownership reform is now fully operational, with the Saudi Properties portal taking applications.

Riyadh’s approved list includes Diriyah Gate, New Murabba, King Abdullah Financial District, Sedra, King Salman Park, Qiddiya, King Salman International Airport and transit-oriented sites. JLL’s own reading is blunt: the zones cluster on named masterplans still being built, not on the older corridors where expatriates already rent. Antara sits between two of those names. It is not itself a giga-project phase.

Non-Saudi residents can still apply to buy one home for personal use outside the zone map. Companies and non-resident buyers are pointed at the designated sites. JLL put the fee stack at a 5 percent real estate transaction tax plus a 2 percent non-Saudi disposal fee, or about 7 percent in all, a structure that favours holders over flippers. None of that retroactively names Antara’s purchaser. It does change who can bid the next time a compound like this comes up, and who is more likely to buy a Ritz-Carlton villa a few minutes south instead.

Paper Work Orders Gave Way to QR Codes

The public file on the new owner is empty. The public file on the operator is not. A Yardi case study dated 13 October 2025, a little over two months after the sale note, says Antara is managed by Salboukh Residential Compound Company. Neil Gallacher is named as co-general manager. The compound had been running maintenance on paper and spreadsheets. It moved work orders onto Yardi Facility Manager, tagged more than 45,000 assets with QR codes, and recorded a 70% increase in service efficiency with task times down 60 percent.

With Yardi Facility Manager, we’ve transformed maintenance at Antara Residential Resort into a proactive, data-driven operation. Our teams now have full visibility over every activity, with the ability to monitor progress in real time and use historical data for smarter planning.

Neil Gallacher, Co-General Manager, Antara Residential Resort, Yardi case study

That is how a 520-home lot is treated once it is an institutional holding: every pump and gate logged, technicians on a phone, downtime scheduled out. No serious public argument formed around the sale itself. The only solid post-auction fact is this ops rebuild, which is the behaviour of a landlord squeezing a yield asset, not a developer launching a brand.

Antara Living Residential Resort in Riyadh has redefined operational excellence by digitising its maintenance processes with Yardi Facility Manager.

✅ 70% increase in service efficiency
✅ 60% reduction in task completion time
✅ 45,000 assets tracked digitally
✅ Real-time… pic.twitter.com/4SEQtHkbP9

— YARDI (@Yardi) October 14, 2025

Inside the walls the product is still the 2020 resort brief. Neighbourhoods gather on Antara Village, a gym, the Gather cafe, and five beautifully interconnected pools. Villas sit in three named pockets, Monaco, Capri and Santorini, with three to five bedrooms. Townhouses stack a ground-floor two-bedroom flat under a three-bedroom duplex. Low-rise apartments run from one to three bedrooms with patios or terraces. A Tamimi Express and an international Montessori pre-school sit on site. The Village Inn lets residents, partner firms and approved guests book short stays. That was not torn up for the auction. The title changed. The pools did not.

Apartment Values Up, Villa Values Down

The wider Riyadh housing tape in 2026 does not look like a melt-up. Knight Frank counted 10,667 residential sales in the capital in the second quarter, 2 percent below a year earlier and 23 percent above the first quarter. Value was SAR 14.3 billion, down 14 percent year on year and up 8 percent quarter on quarter. Across the kingdom it logged 45,740 deals, down 12 percent year on year, worth SAR 41.9 billion, down 24.6 percent.

Prices split by product. Riyadh apartment values rose 3.1 percent year on year to SAR 6,369 per square metre. Villa values fell 2.2 percent. Knight Frank put Riyadh’s housing stock at about 2.81 million units in 2026 and 3.30 million by 2030. That is more ordinary homes coming, not more 520-unit gated lots with a village and five pools. JLL had already said Riyadh was short of comparable compound stock when it took Antara to market. The Knight Frank split helps explain why a bidder would pay up for a leased compound even as villa prices cooled: the scarce thing is the operating community, not another empty plot.

WHAT THE Q2 2026 TAPE SHOWED

• Riyadh deals: 10,667 sales, slightly below the prior year, sharply above the first quarter.
• Apartment prices: SAR 6,369 per square metre, up 3.1 percent year on year.
• Villa prices: down 2.2 percent in Riyadh, the opposite move from flats.
• Future stock: 2.81 million Riyadh homes in 2026, 3.30 million forecast by 2030.

Antara’s unnamed buyer now holds a rented compound that opened in 2020, was sold in 2025, and is being run with QR codes on 45,000 pieces of kit. South of the gates, Diriyah Company is selling branded homes into a zone foreigners can own. North of them, New Murabba is still a long downtown. The Saudi fund that hired JLL already cashed out. The next test is whether those 520 leases still look dear once the neighbours’ show homes fill up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Homes Sit Inside Antara Compound?

Villas in the Monaco, Capri and Santorini pockets come in three- to five-bedroom plans. Each townhouse pairs a ground-floor two-bedroom apartment that has its own door with a three-bedroom duplex above. Apartments are one, two or three bedrooms with a patio or terrace. The mix is why a single lot can house singles, couples and families without a second address.

What Is the Village Inn at Antara?

The Village Inn is a block of furnished suites and studios for short and medium stays. Bookings are limited to residents, partner companies and their approved guests, so it functions as a landing pad and overflow wing rather than a hotel open to the street. Gulf Related also said the on-site Montessori pre-school was sized for up to 100 children.

Can Foreigners Buy a Home Next to Antara?

Diriyah Gate and New Murabba are on the Riyadh list of zones where non-Saudis may own property, after the law took effect in January 2026 and the maps were approved on 23 June 2026. Non-Saudi residents may also apply to buy one home for personal use outside those zones. Foreign companies and non-resident buyers are steered to the named masterplans, which is why branded Diriyah stock and the gated rental compound are not the same shopping list.

Who Advised the Seller on Legal Work?

Hourani and Partners acted as legal counsel to JLL’s client, the Saudi fund that sold the compound. JLL ran the auction as exclusive sell-side advisor. The purchaser’s counsel was not named in the sale note, and the buyer’s identity remains undisclosed.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a completed real estate sale and the housing market around it. It is for information only and is not a valuation, an offering document, or investment, legal or tax advice. Readers thinking of buying, selling or financing property in Saudi Arabia should consult a licensed real estate broker, a qualified lawyer and a tax adviser who can review the specific asset and the current ownership rules. Unit counts, occupancy comments, prices, fees and project timelines reflect the company statements and research cited here and can change as new filings, zone maps and completions are issued.