The lack of affordable housing is stopping house-hunters in Saudi Arabia from purchasing property, according to new research.

Leading property website Lamudi has launched its first research report on real estate in the emerging markets.

The company’s inaugural white paper, Real Estate in the Emerging Markets, provides a comprehensive overview of the future of the property sector in Saudi Arabia, providing insight into the current real estate environment in the Kingdom.

Based on a series of online surveys conducted with house-hunters and real estate agents in each country, the report examines the habits of online property-seekers.

The report, which analyzes the buying and rental market in the Kingdom, reveals that affordability is the main reason for the high number of renters in Saudi Arabia.

According to local house-hunters, 37 percent of those surveyed are currently renting as they are unable to afford to purchase a property.

The majority of respondents (55.7 percent) are currently saving to buy their first property and 79.7 percent expect to purchase property within the next five to 10 years. Among buyers, the key driver for purchasing property is security; over three-quarters (81.6 percent) of respondents cited security as the main driver for buying.

The report offers insights into the future of the property sector based on interviews and surveys with local property experts, including Liam Bailey, Global Head of Residential Research at Knight Frank; and Salman Ben Saedan, founder of Salman Abdullah Sin Saedan Real Estate and board member of the Tunisian Saudi Real Estate Company.

Key findings from the report include:

*When it comes to searching for property, house hunters are now regularly turning to the Web to look for real estate. 91 percent of those surveyed by Lamudi said that the Internet is currently being used to search for real estate.

*According to Lamudi data, 95 percent of real estate agents believe that there is a clear demand for more houses and apartments to be built in Saudi Arabia, with 32 percent claiming that more than one million properties will be needed to meet demand.

*Thanks to demographic trends and pricing pressures, inexpensive property development has become a priority for the Saudi Arabian government in the Kingdom; the government has pledged huge investments to meet the rising demand, with over SR250 billion being injected into the property market to create more than 500,000 new housing units.

Kian Moini, Lamudi’s global co-founder and managing director, said: “While more developed real estate markets are often in the spotlight, real estate in the emerging world receives much less attention from both researchers and the media.

Lamudi’s research provides a completely original perspective of Saudi Arabia’s property market, at a time when both real estate and investment in the Middle East are increasingly coming into focus.”

The 16 countries covered in the report are: Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mexico and Colombia.

The full report is presented in an easy-to-read online format, available for viewing on the Lamudi website — saudi.lamudi.com/research/.

Launched in 2013, Lamudi is a global property portal focusing exclusively on emerging markets.

The fast-growing platform is currently available in 28 countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, with more than 700,000 real estate listings across its global network.

The leading real estate marketplace offers sellers, buyers, landlords and renters a secure and easy-to-use platform to find or list properties online.