Muscat – To facilitate home ownership, the government allotted 12,273 residential plots of land to citizens this year till the end of August compared to 1,762 in the same period of 2021, an increase 597 per cent.

According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information, 1,721 land plots were given away in South Batinah in 2022 compared to 181 in 2021, followed by 1,692 in Dakhliyah, 1,680 in North Batinah, and 1,562 in Dhofar.

In the North Sharqiyah, 1,392 residential plots were allotted, 1,228 in Muscat, 602 in Buraimi, 230 in Musandam and 36 in Al Wusta in the first eight months of 2022.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning (MHUP) recently launched a new service – ‘Choose Your Land’ – to allot residential land to citizens, which gives citizens the option to select a plot of their choice.

According to ministry data, the number of residential plots in various governorates of the sultanate that were allotted in ten years till 2020 was 343,629. The total number of applications in this period was 447,612.

In May 2022, MHUP introduced new criteria for land allotment, including if the applicant is a man, he must be between 23 and 40 years of age and the only breadwinner of a family consisting of a wife and children or either one of them. A single parent can also apply provided he is less than 40 years.

If the applicant is a woman, she must be aged between 23 to 40 years and be the only breadwinner of her family, or married to a non-Omani and residing in the sultanate permanently, or divorced, widowed or deserted and have no children or support for herself.

Priority for allotting government land is given to families that do not own a house or residential land suitable for construction. The allotted land cannot be sold, but only after completion of construction and in accordance with ministry regulations.