Oman Property Prices per Square Metre in 2026: 29 Projects Ranked

Price per square metre is the number that cuts through Oman’s property marketing. A “from $106,900” studio and a “from $170,600” two-bedroom look like a cheap and a mid-priced option until you divide by size and discover the cheaper ticket is more than two and a half times the price of the space. We did that division for every Omani project we list that publishes both an entry price and an entry size — 29 projects in total — and ranked them. This guide shows the full table, what each area costs per square metre, the four traps the ranking exposes, and how Oman compares with Dubai on the same measure.

The short version: the median freehold home a foreigner can buy in our Oman portfolio costs about $268 per square foot, or roughly OMR 1,109 per square metre. The range runs from about $100 per square foot in Sultan Haitham City to about $540 at the Mandarin Oriental residences in Shatti Al Qurum. And the two cheapest square metres on the whole list are in government housing schemes that foreigners cannot buy.

How We Calculated These Figures

Every figure below comes from our own live listings in September 2026, not from a third-party index. For each project we took the published entry price in US dollars and divided it by the published size of that entry unit. Where a listing gives the price per unit type in its body, we used the entry unit’s own price and size. We then converted to square metres (1 m² = 10.7639 sq ft) and to Omani rials at the fixed rate of OMR 1 = $2.6008.

Three limits are worth stating up front, because they shape how you should read the numbers:

• This is an entry-unit rate, not an average. Larger units in the same building usually cost less per square metre, and a few projects invert that (see trap three below).
• Fourteen Omani listings are left out because they publish no size for the entry unit or no price at all — including Mira Ocean Estates, Plumeria in Sohar, Maysan in Duqm, both Sarooj Oasis releases, Yenaier Residences, Bellevue, Azura Beach Residences, St. Regis Residences and the two Muriya land plots, whose price includes a villa build with no published built-up area.
• Developer sizes are usually gross. Balconies, terraces and sometimes a share of common areas are included, so two units with the same headline size can differ in usable space.

The Full Ranking: Oman Price per Square Metre, 2026

A spread of almost ten times from top to bottom is unusual for a market this small, and it is the first sign that “Oman property prices” is not one number. The list really contains three different markets: branded and waterfront resort residences in Muscat, mid-market resort communities in Muscat, Jebel Sifah and Salalah, and a new-town and government-scheme tier where the square metre costs a fraction of the coast.

Price per Square Metre by Area

Grouping the ranking by location makes the market’s shape clearer. The ranges below run from each area’s cheapest to dearest entry rate among the projects we list.

Two things stand out. First, sea frontage and a brand add more per square metre than anything else in Oman: the gap between Muscat Hills, a golf community without a beach, and Muscat Bay’s beachfront Al Mina is about 50% on the same measure. Second, Salalah is not a cheap alternative to Muscat by this yardstick — Lubana Island’s entry rate sits above most of Muscat’s resort communities, because what you are paying for there is lagoon frontage in a resort, not a regional-city price.

Trap One: The Cheapest Square Metres Are Not for Sale to You

The bottom two rows of the ranking — Nismat Zain in Sur at about OMR 232 per square metre and Husn Al Zain in Bidbid at about OMR 273 — are part of Surooh, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning’s affordable-housing programme. Both sit on ordinary land rather than inside an Integrated Tourism Complex, both are two-storey homes, so the four-plus-floor usufruct route does not apply either. For a foreign buyer, both fail every standard ownership route.

That makes the realistic bottom of the market Hay Al Wafa in Sultan Haitham City at about $100 per square foot (OMR 414 per square metre), a government-scheme project that is offered freehold to all nationalities. The cheapest square metre a foreigner can actually buy therefore costs roughly 79% more than the cheapest square metre on the list. Our guide to Oman property foreigners cannot buy explains the three-question test behind this: is it inside an ITC, if not is it in a special economic zone and what title is on offer today, and does the building have four or more floors.

Trap Two: Tenure Changes What the Number Means

A square metre of freehold and a square metre of 99-year leasehold are not the same product, even on the same beach. The Sea Front Residences at Taqah, at about OMR 898 per square metre, is sold on a 99-year renewable lease according to the developer’s own brochure. Taqah Long Beach Boutique, three kilometres away and cheaper per square metre still, states no tenure at all in its documents and asks for 50% at reservation. Uptown Muscat sits in Knowledge Oasis Muscat, which its own listing describes as a technology estate rather than a coastal ITC, so its title position for foreign buyers should be confirmed in writing before anything else.

Duqm is the clearest example of why we excluded some listings entirely. Maysan’s $76,700 studio publishes no size, and it is sold on a 99-year leasehold inside the special economic zone. Royal Decree 38/2025 made freehold in economic zones legal, but no conversion date has been published for that project. It does come with lower purchase costs, which our Duqm guide sets out, but a lower price per square metre on a lease should never be compared directly with freehold on the coast.

Trap Three: Small Units Cost the Most per Square Metre

The instinct that a smaller unit is the cheaper way in is right about the ticket and wrong about the space. The clearest illustration is The Sustainable City – Yiti, which publishes prices and sizes for every unit type:

In the same community, the villa costs about a third less per square foot than the one-bedroom apartment. The pattern repeats elsewhere: at Uptown Muscat the penthouse works out at about $192 per square foot against $261 for the studio in the same building, and at AIDA in Yiti the villas start at about $309 per square foot while The Great Escape apartments in the same gated community start at about $325. Only the Mandarin Oriental residences run the other way, with the rate rising as units get larger — which is typical of branded residences, where the largest homes carry the best views.

The practical consequence is that the ranking above flatters projects whose entry unit is large and penalises projects whose entry unit is a studio. When you compare two buildings, compare the same unit type in both.

Trap Four: A Cheap Ticket Is Not Cheap Space

The entry price and the price per square metre often point in opposite directions. Uptown Muscat’s studio at $106,900 is one of the lowest tickets in the portfolio, but at about $261 per square foot it buys 409 square feet. Hay Al Wafa’s two-bedroom apartment at $170,600 costs about 60% more in cash and buys more than four times the space, at about $100 per square foot. For a buyer who will live in the property, or who wants a unit that suits long-term family tenants, the second is the better deal by a wide margin.

The reverse also applies. A studio can make sense precisely because the ticket is small — for a first investment, for an Owner Visa, or for a holiday base — but it should be bought knowing it is the most expensive space in its building, and that its service charge takes a larger bite out of the rent. Our analysis of service charges in Oman found the worst ratio of annual charge to price on a studio, at about 1.15% a year.

Villas Versus Apartments per Square Metre

Across the ranking, villas tend to sit in the middle or lower half, and apartments at both extremes. Raya’s entry villa in Jebel Sifah works out at about $291 per square foot, Olive Farms at about $242, and the Al Ahlam District villas in Sultan Haitham City at about $118 — the cheapest villa square foot on the list, because the plots are large and the location is inland and early-stage. Apartments occupy both the top of the table, in branded towers at Shatti Al Qurum and Al Mouj, and the bottom foreign-buyable row at Hay Al Wafa.

That matters for anyone deciding between a small villa and a large apartment at a similar budget. In several communities the villa gives more space for the money, a private garden or pool, and the same freehold title. What it usually gives up is location: the cheapest villas per square metre are further from the sea and the city than the dearest apartments.

How Oman Compares with Dubai per Square Foot

Most buyers looking at Oman have also looked at Dubai, and price per square foot is the fairest way to compare the two. In the first half of 2026, Dubai apartments averaged about AED 1,790.8 per square foot and villas about AED 2,324.7, according to Reliant Surveyors data reported by Consultancy-me. At the fixed dirham peg of 3.6725, that is roughly $488 per square foot for apartments and $633 for villas.

Only the two branded residences at the very top of our Oman list cost more per square foot than an average Dubai apartment. The typical Omani resort home costs a little over half of Dubai’s average rate. The two figures are not perfectly comparable — Dubai’s is an average of transactions across the whole market, ours is the entry rate of the projects we list — but the gap is too large to be an artefact of method. Our Dubai price per square metre guide breaks that side down by area, and Oman vs Dubai real estate investment covers the rest of the comparison, from liquidity to residency.

Why Oman’s Price per Square Metre Varies So Much

Four factors explain most of the gap between the top and bottom of the ranking, and they are worth separating because some are durable and some are not.

Brand. The two most expensive rates on the list both belong to branded residences. A hotel or luxury brand adds services, management standards and resale recognition, and buyers pay for that in the rate per square metre. The premium is real, but it is also the part of the price most exposed to a change in the operator agreement, so ask how long the brand licence runs and what happens to the residences if it ends.

Completion. The Mandarin Oriental residences are finished and furnished; almost everything else on the list is off-plan, with handovers from 2026 to 2029. A completed home removes construction risk and can earn rent immediately, and that certainty is priced in. When you compare an off-plan rate with a completed one, the difference is partly the price of waiting.

Frontage. Beach, lagoon and marina frontage are the single largest location premium in Oman. Inside the same master plan, units facing the water typically sit at the top of the developer’s own price ladder, and inland communities such as Muscat Hills and Sultan Haitham City sit well below the coast.

Land and scheme type. The cheapest rates come from new towns and government housing programmes, where land is plentiful and plots are large. That is a lasting cost advantage, but it comes with an early-stage location and, in the Surooh schemes, ownership rules that exclude foreign buyers altogether.

Price per Square Metre and Rental Income

Rent does not rise in step with size. A tenant pays for bedrooms, location and amenities, and an extra square metre in an already large home adds little to the rent it can achieve. That is why the smallest, most expensive-per-metre units can still post respectable gross yields: their rent is high relative to their ticket, even though the space itself is dear.

The catch is that costs which are charged per square metre — service charges above all — do scale with size, while costs that are fixed per unit, such as management fees and furnishing, weigh more heavily on small homes. The only reliable way to compare two properties as investments is to work out net income after service charges and management, and divide it by the full purchase cost including VAT and registration. Our guide to rental yields in Oman sets out that calculation, and the price-per-square-metre ranking above tells you where to start looking, not which unit will earn the most.

What Price per Square Metre Does Not Tell You

A low rate per square metre is where analysis starts, not where it ends. Four costs sit outside it and can change the answer:

• Service charges, also quoted per square metre. The spread is wide: Vistal’s rate works out at about OMR 19.5 per square metre a year, Luma’s apartments about OMR 8.27, and the Mandarin Oriental residences just over OMR 3 — with hotel services likely billed separately there. On a 150 m² home, that is the difference between roughly OMR 500 and OMR 2,900 a year. Always ask whether a per-square-metre charge is monthly or annual.
• Purchase costs. New-build ITC purchases typically carry 5% VAT on the developer’s first sale plus a 3% registration fee, while a resale unit is generally VAT-exempt. Our property tax in Oman guide works through the numbers.
• Payment timing. Two homes at the same rate per square metre can cost very different amounts in present-value terms if one asks 30% before handover and the other 100%. See Oman property payment plans.
• Handover date. The ranking mixes completed homes with projects handing over as late as 2029. A cheaper square metre delivered three years later is not necessarily cheaper.

How Many Square Metres Reach the Golden Residency Threshold?

Oman’s 10-year Golden Residency requires a qualifying property investment of at least OMR 200,000. Dividing that threshold by each area’s rate per square metre shows how much home it takes to qualify — a useful sense check before you shortlist:

This is why the residency question is usually answered by the unit, not the project. At Mandarin Oriental the one-bedroom, at about OMR 169,986, still falls OMR 30,014 short, while the two-bedroom clears it. Price per square metre is not the only test — the qualifying rules also look at the kind of property and where it is — so read our comparison of the Golden Residency and the Owner Visa before relying on a calculation like this. The Owner Visa has no published minimum value and attaches to property you already own.

How to Use Price per Square Metre When You Buy

1. Ask for the full price list with sizes, not just the “from” price. Divide each unit yourself; the cheapest ticket and the cheapest square metre are often different units.
2. Compare like with like — the same unit type, in the same kind of community, at a similar stage of construction.
3. Ask whether sizes are gross or net and how much of the area is terrace or balcony.
4. Check the title before the rate. A cheap square metre on a lease, on unstated tenure or in a citizens-only scheme is not a bargain for a foreign buyer.
5. Add the service charge and purchase costs per square metre before deciding which is cheaper to own over five years.
6. Use it in negotiation. Oman’s resale market is still thin — most schemes have not yet handed over — so recent comparable sales are scarce. A developer’s own per-square-metre ladder across its unit types is often the best evidence you have when a specific unit looks out of line.

If you plan to sell later, remember that buyers will run the same arithmetic. Units priced well above their building’s typical rate at purchase tend to be harder to resell at a profit; our guide to selling property in Oman covers the exit side.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average price per square metre for property in Oman?
Across the foreign-buyable freehold projects we list, the median entry rate is about OMR 1,109 per square metre, or roughly $268 per square foot. The range runs from about OMR 414 in Sultan Haitham City to about OMR 2,235 for branded residences in Shatti Al Qurum.

Where is the cheapest price per square metre in Oman for foreigners?
Among the projects we list, Hay Al Wafa in Sultan Haitham City, at about $100 per square foot for a two-bedroom apartment. Two cheaper schemes, in Sur and Bidbid, are government housing that foreigners cannot buy.

Is Oman cheaper than Dubai per square foot?
Generally yes, by a wide margin. Dubai apartments averaged about $488 per square foot in the first half of 2026; the median Omani freehold entry unit we list is about $268. Only the top two branded residences on our list exceed Dubai’s apartment average.

Why do studios cost more per square metre than larger homes?
Fixed costs such as kitchens, bathrooms and lifts are spread over less space, and small units are in demand from investors and first-time buyers. At The Sustainable City – Yiti the one-bedroom costs about $346 per square foot against $226 for a villa.

Is Salalah cheaper than Muscat per square metre?
Not at the resort level. Lubana Island at Hawana Salalah starts at about $359 per square foot, above most of Muscat’s resort communities. Salalah’s lower tickets come from smaller units, not a cheaper rate.

Do these prices include VAT and registration fees?
No. They are listing prices. New-build purchases in an ITC typically add 5% VAT and a 3% registration fee on top; resale units are generally VAT-exempt.

The Bottom Line

Oman’s property market spans almost ten times from its cheapest to its dearest square metre, and most of that spread is explained by four things you can check: whether you can legally own it, how the title is held, how big the unit is, and how close it sits to the sea or a brand. Once those are controlled for, the typical foreign-buyable resort home costs a little over half of Dubai’s average rate per square foot — which is the most useful single number for anyone weighing the two markets.

Browse every current listing on our Oman property page, compare apartments for sale in Oman or affordable homes in Oman, or read our area guides to Sultan Haitham City, Jebel Sifah, Al Mouj and Hawana Salalah. Title registration in Oman is handled by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, and Golden Residency applications go through Invest Oman.