How to Get a Building Permit in Saudi Arabia Through Balady: 2026 Guide

Building permits in Saudi Arabia are issued online through Balady, and the owner does not apply alone. Balady is the Ministry of Municipalities and Housing’s e-services platform where permits are issued. You authorise a design engineering office, which prepares the drawings and submits the application, and a supervising office, a contractor and latent-defects insurance are linked to the application before the permit takes effect. Most of the delay we see comes not from the platform or the municipality but from a file that arrives incomplete and goes back for corrections, again and again.

This guide covers the documents required, the correct order of steps as set out in Balady’s building permit service card, and where people usually get stuck.

Which authority issues the building permit for your plot?

Not all land falls under the regional municipality (the Amanah). Industrial cities such as Jubail come under the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, with entirely different requirements and a different permit route. In Al Khobar, for example, permits come from Al Khobar Municipality under the Eastern Province Amanah; our Al Khobar page explains that route.

Starting design on the wrong assumption means redoing it entirely. Confirm the competent authority for your specific plot before taking any other step.

What documents do you need for a building permit?

Two terms need explaining. The title deed (sakk, صك) is the ownership document for the plot. The survey decision (al-qarar al-misahi, القرار المساحي) is the official survey record for the plot that the permit is based on, and it must be valid and issued for building purposes.

According to Balady’s service card, the file includes:

Requirement	Practical note
Up-to-date electronic title deed (or a housing or investment contract)	An old paper deed needs updating before you start
Valid survey decision for building purposes	The design office selects it at the start of the application
Contract with a design engineering office	The design office is the one that submits the application
Contract with a supervising engineering office and a building contractor	Both must accept being linked to the application
Latent-defects insurance	The permit does not take effect until the policy is paid
Soil investigation report	A mandatory attachment
Traffic study report	Only if the project’s use requires one
Declarations, undertakings and fee payment	Completed on the platform

Further requirements may apply depending on the building’s type, use and location. The model contracts for the design and supervising offices are published on Balady’s building permit requirements page (in Arabic).

What are the steps to get a building permit, in order?

1. Survey decision and deed check

This comes before design, not after. A land survey establishes the plot’s actual dimensions and levels and reveals any difference from the deed, and a valid survey decision is a condition of the application itself.

Differences between the deed and the ground are more common than people expect, especially in established neighbourhoods. Finding one at this stage costs a drawing revision. Finding it after construction starts costs many times more.

2. Choose and authorise the design office on Balady

From your Balady account, which you sign in to through Nafath (the national single sign-on service), you authorise the design engineering office. Before you do, check that the office’s classification covers the type and size of your project. The classification is shown in Balady’s engineering office inquiry service.

This is where most people get stuck. The authorisation is not complete when you send it. The office has to accept it from its own account. If the office does not appear linked to your application, the usual reason is that it has not accepted yet.

3. Drawings and technical review

Once the authorisation is accepted, the office selects the survey decision and prepares the package: architectural, structural and MEP drawings. They must comply with the Saudi Building Code (SBC), whose 2024 edition has been mandatory since mid-2025, and with the site requirements such as setbacks, building ratios and heights.

The file goes to a technical review body that checks it against the code. Any comment sends it back to the design office for revision. The municipality then reviews it and issues the design approval if there are no comments.

4. Link the supervising office and the contractor

The design office names the supervising office and the contractor on the application, and each of them must accept from its own account, the same logic as the authorisation in step 2. Choosing the supervising office is your decision, not the contractor’s; see Is engineering supervision mandatory in Saudi Arabia?

5. Latent-defects insurance

The contractor completes the application details and sends them to the insurance company, which issues a payment link for the latent-defects insurance policy (insurance against hidden defects in the building). For applications submitted after 25 June 2025, this happens within the permit route on Balady.

6. Fee payment and issue of the permit

The design office pays the municipal fee invoice and the permit is issued electronically. But it does not take effect until the insurance policy is paid. After issue, the permit details are shared with bodies such as the electricity and water companies, Civil Defence and the real estate registry.

Permit fees are separate from the contractor’s price; our guide to villa construction costs in Al Khobar and Dammam lists what else sits outside the per-m² rate.

7. Construction, supervision and the occupancy certificate

From the moment the permit takes effect, the supervising office’s role begins: documented site visits at critical stages, and construction reports uploaded to the platform. When construction is finished, the occupancy certificate, often called the building completion certificate, is issued for new applications through the supervising office once the construction reports are complete. Our engineering supervision service covers this stage.

Without documented supervision reports, there is no completion certificate.

How long does a building permit take, and where is the time lost?

Balady’s service card states 10 days. What lengthens it is the number of times the file comes back. From what we see, the causes of delay, in order of frequency, are:

1. An incomplete file that goes back for revision more than once.
2. A mismatch between the drawings and the deed that was not caught early because there was no land survey.
3. A link that has not been accepted by the design office, the supervising office or the contractor, while the owner waits without knowing why.
4. Drawings that ignore the site requirements or the code, which come back with comments from technical review.
5. Starting design before confirming the competent authority.

Four of these five are solved by doing the steps in the right order, not by chasing the authority harder.

The bottom line

The permit route is not complicated, but it does not tolerate incomplete files. Start with the survey decision and the competent authority, choose an office whose classification suits your project, and make sure every link on the platform (design office, supervising office and contractor) is complete and the insurance is paid so the permit takes effect.

At FJS we prepare the complete permit file and guide you through the authorisation steps. Send us your plot details and we will explain the route that applies to your site.