Oman

Muscat is the market that matters for scale. At the end of May 2026 the National Centre for Statistics and Information put the governorate at 1,538,312 people, 28.6 percent of a national population of 5,388,513. Government, ports, the airport and private firms are why those households are here. A coastal scheme aimed at a non-resident is a small slice of that city.

Al Mouj and Muscat Hills are names buyers are shown. They are not, by themselves, the legal category. Royal Decree 12/2006 allows ownership, including by a non-Omani, inside an integrated tourism complex that has been licensed. The Ministry of Heritage and Tourism publishes the regulations. A brochure does not issue the licence. The Muscat brief keeps the districts apart from Salalah.

Dhofar governorate had 535,623 residents at the end of May 2026. Salalah is a wilayat inside it, not the whole governorate. Royal Decree 29/2018 prohibits non-Omani ownership in Dhofar except the Wilayat of Salalah, and it does so without prejudice to the integrated-tourism-complex route. Being outside that geographic ban is not a general freehold. A non-Omani purchase still needs a positive permission, which for this reader is the licensed-complex route in the 2006 decree.

The khareef brings visitors and a different calendar from Muscat’s working year. A full season is not a year-round tenancy. The Salalah brief is that distinction.

The ordinary rule is restriction. Royal Decree 29/2018 lists governorates, wilayats and mountains where a non-Omani may not own land or property, and it leaves the 2006 integrated-tourism-complex statute standing. Royal Decree 12/2006 allows an Omani or a non-Omani to own land or a built unit in a complex licensed by the competent authority, for accommodation or investment, in a form the law already recognises. The state may still reserve a complex to Omanis. The executive regulations set the conditions.

Article 8 of the 2006 decree says a non-Omani owner may be granted a residence permit for themselves and first-degree relatives. The grant is not in the sale contract. The regulations, written with the immigration authority, set the stipulations. GCC citizens have a separate instrument, Royal Decree 21/2004, and are not this card.

The tenant who pays a long let in Muscat is usually attached to a job, a school or a government contract. Expatriate compounds and ordinary Omani family housing do not clear together. A complex marketed to a foreign buyer can be aimed at a seasonal or absentee occupier. That occupier is not the civil servant or the port engineer.

Salalah’s visitor months can fill a short stay and still leave a long let dependent on who actually lives in the wilayat. No rent is printed. The useful record is who was in the building last year, and in which months.

Muscat’s connections that can be used today are the airport, the port at Sultan Qaboos, and the road network along the coast. There is no metro to underwrite a tower against. A scheme described as minutes from the airport should be driven at the hour the household would drive it.

Salalah has its own airport and its own roads, and the khareef changes how those roads feel. A national infrastructure slogan does not join the two cities. The population figures above are the scale: Muscat is the concentration, Dhofar is much smaller, and the rest of the sultanate is not a single housing market.

Oman is a small market next to the United Arab Emirates. The May 2026 count is 5.4 million people in the whole sultanate, and under a third of them are in Muscat governorate. A building that needs a deep pool of foreign resale buyers is being asked to find them inside that scale, or to import them.

Integrated tourism complexes are a licensed exception, not the width of the market. Most households will never buy in one. Treating a handful of coastal schemes as ‘Oman property’ describes the product foreign buyers are shown, and misses the city where people already live.

The licence. A development sold as if it were an integrated tourism complex still has to be one under the 2006 decree and the current regulations. The 2018 decree shows that geography can be closed. A name on a gate is not the licence.

The tenant and the exit. Absentee ownership in a small city depends on a narrow set of next buyers. Service costs and empty months do not shrink because the photograph is of the sea. A residence permit that was part of the sales conversation can be revised without changing the title. Muscat and Salalah do not share a season or a resale pool.