Egypt opens its property market to foreign buyers

As the country seeks more direct investment, a period of overbuilding and weak domestic demand means that there are plenty of assets to choose from, but are prices inflated?

Amir Makar / AFP

An aerial view of the Maadi suburb and its section overlooking the Nile river in the south of Egypt's capital Cairo on 15 October 2021.

Egypt opens its property market to foreign buyers

Amr Emam

last update on 13 Jul 2026

Egypt is to end the limits on foreigners owning real estate in a bid to bring in more capital, despite warnings from nationalists. A law from 1996 currently restricts foreign nationals to owning a maximum of two properties and they need to be located in two different cities, but the government of Egyptian Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli is to allow foreigners to own any number of properties in any number of locations.

Madbouli said it would diversify income streams and attract foreign direct investment (FDI), as Cairo tries to maximise returns, boost foreign currency revenues, and capitalise on the large number of housing units in new cities and urban communities that sprouted in the Egyptian desert over the past two decades. Some estimates put these units at 13 million. Egyptians used to live on 7% only of their country's geographical space of one million square kilometres, mainly in the Nile Delta and Valley. The new urban areas built in recent years have doubled the country’s habitable space.

Cash needed

The government says it will launch a new online platform to ease the rules on foreigners owning property. By encouraging foreign buyers of Egyptian real estate, Cairo is copying states such as Türkiye and Greece, which attracted considerable FDI by opening their property markets. Egypt is working hard to collect the foreign cash it needs to meet its bailout obligations to international crediting institutions and buy goods and energy on the international market.

Khaled Desouki / AFP — An aerial view of ongoing construction development at Egypt's New Administrative Capital, a megaproject 45km east of Cairo, on 13 March 2020.

“Foreign investments make our country financially capable of meeting its international obligations,” said Khaled al-Shafie, the head of local think tank, Capital Centre for Economic Studies and Research. He added that the flow of FDI to different sectors of the economy also creates jobs for the national workforce. “This flow also improves Egypt’s credit rating, which boosts confidence in the local investment climate.”

Egypt has been advertising its assets to foreign buyers, particularly sovereign wealth funds in Gulf states, and has so far raised tens of billions of dollars. Asset sales including land in prime locations on Egypt’s Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts, to assist with repayments to the International Monetary Fund for its bailout loans in 2022 and 2024.

Housing bubble

The timing is unfortunate, given the stagnant local real estate property market. Some economists point to a possible housing bubble driven by the dramatic surge in real estate prices and the lack of local demand. This might explain the timing of the government’s decision to open the door to foreign buyers, especially if properties’ current prices are inflated.

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters — The futuristic Iconic Tower skyscraper in a business district, built by a Chinese firm in the New Administrative Capital, east of Cairo, on 19 January 2026.

By trying to resuscitate demand in the real estate market, Cairo is intervening to help the construction sector, which accounts for more than 10% of Egypt’s GDP (gross domestic product) and employs up to 15% of the national workforce. There are also dozens of economic and industrial activities connected to construction, so millions more jobs or indirectly connected.

Up to 13 million housing units in new cities and urban communities have sprouted in the Egyptian desert over the past two decades

The gap between supply and demand suggests that Egypt has been overbuilding over the past two decades. Justifications include population growth, expanding its country's habitable space, and redistributing its population to reduce pressure on the Nile Valley and Delta. Now there are concerns that this reasoning was flawed.

"Sorry to say, but this construction boom had nothing to do with the real needs of most Egyptians," said independent real estate expert Khaled al-Aswani. "Most of the urban communities built in those years aimed primarily to create investment opportunities for those who have a lot of money only."

Supply and demand

It is not known how much money Egypt spent on construction over the past 20 years, in the effort to build new cities and urban communities, including a new capital in the desert that is almost the size of Singapore City, Nairobi, and Tehran. Another is New Alamein, a World War II site on the Mediterranean. The same urban boom led to dozens of new gated communities containing expensive housing units and properties for the wealthy. These could be seen as poor judgement in a country where average salaries are less than $200.

Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters — Towers at the Walk of North Square along the Mediterranean Sea in New al-Alamein City in Egypt on 8 August 2024.

The gap between the unaffordable real estate prices and the financial means of most Egyptians may explain why foreign buyers are now a necessity, regardless of the government's foreign currency aspirations. Still, some nationalist Egyptians have expressed concern about increasing foreign ownership. They argue that an influx of foreign capital into property will push prices up further, make housing unaffordable even for those Egyptians who can currently afford it.

Since 2023, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese nationals fled the civil war in their country and settled in Egypt by buying or renting property with the money they brought, which affected prices and proved a boon to developers and landlords alike, but which added pressure on locals. Elsewhere in Egypt there are sizeable Syrian, Libyan, and Yemeni communities, they too having fled war and settled by buying or renting. Egypt is now home to about 10.5 million refugees and asylum-seekers, all of whom need to live somewhere. How the change in ownership rules affects them remains to be seen.

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