REGA Real Estate Ad Licence Rules: A Checklist for Every Campaign

On 1 May 2026 the Umm Al-Qura Gazette published REGA board decision 2/35/M/26, which approves the Regulatory Regulation for Real Estate Marketing and Advertising. The Real Estate General Authority (REGA) issued it under the Real Estate Brokerage Law, and the decision states that it takes effect from the date of publication. For developers, brokers and the agencies running their Meta, Snapchat, TikTok and Google campaigns, the useful question is narrower than the regulation as a whole: what has to be true of each ad before it goes live?

This guide turns the regulation into a working checklist for marketing teams. It is not legal advice.

What the 2026 regulation changed for campaigns

The regulation has twelve articles and covers every channel used to market property: social media, visual, audio and written media, billboards and advertising units, exhibitions and events, and electronic real estate platforms. It replaces two board decisions from 1442 AH: the real estate advertising controls and the standards for licensing and classifying electronic real estate platforms. REGA says the draft was opened for public comment on the Istitlaa platform in November 2025.

Four points matter most to anyone running campaigns:

• One licence per ad. REGA’s announcement says a separate real estate advertising licence is required before any real estate ad is published, requested by a licensed broker or licensed real estate establishment.
• A project-level route for some sales. Article 9 says no ad licence is needed where the advertiser is already licensed to market the whole project under other regulations, giving real estate contributions, off-plan sale and lease, and real estate auctions as examples. REGA’s announcement adds that these licensees must still state their licence number and follow the regulation’s other controls.
• Fixed data on the ad. Article 5 lists eight data items every ad must carry, including the licence number shown prominently and its expiry date. The ad may instead show the licence number with a QR code that leads to the full data.
• No fictitious or misleading data. Article 7 prohibits fictitious data published to collect people’s details, contact details that do not match the licence, data that contradicts reality, and use of REGA’s or any other government body’s name, logo or identity without legal basis.

Ads must also be removed as soon as their purpose ends or their licence expires, whichever comes first. An ad set left running after a unit sells is now a compliance problem, not just wasted budget.

Which licence covers which creative

Settle which licence each piece of content sits under before writing a headline.

Two operational points follow from REGA’s earlier guidance. When REGA launched its advertisement licence inquiry service in May 2024, it said issuing an ad licence depends on a valid brokerage contract that explicitly includes marketing rights. The same service lets brokers, owners and property seekers check whether a licence is active, expired or cancelled. Your audience can check your ads.

The REGA spokesperson also told Amlak (7 May 2026) that direct communication with clients, negotiating or answering inquiries turns advertising into a real estate activity reserved for licensed Saudis, and that every advertising route must ultimately lead to a licensed broker. That shapes who answers your WhatsApp and call-tracking numbers, which we come back to below.

The per-creative checklist

Use this before any ad, post, story, reel, carousel or landing page goes for approval. The eight items follow Article 5(1) of the regulation as published by REGA, in our working translation. Article 5(3) lets ads on licensed electronic real estate platforms show the ad data pulled from REGA’s systems instead.

1. The rights being advertised: the real or personal rights on offer, such as sale or rent.
2. Property description: the property’s description, condition, details and location, including any information that affects its value or the decision of the person the ad targets.
3. Services and attached rights: the services and rights attached to the property, including any existing disputes over it.
4. A contact method that matches the data submitted with the licence application.
5. The advertiser’s name.
6. The ad licence number, shown prominently. On a nine-second reel, a number flashed in the corner of one frame is unlikely to count as prominent. Keep it on screen or in a persistent end card.
7. The licence expiry date.
8. The licensee’s practice licence number, meaning the broker’s or establishment’s own licence.

Article 5(2) allows the ad to show only the licence number and a QR code that leads to all of the above. On a small format that is usually the practical choice, but test that the code scans at the size it will actually appear.

Then run four creative checks that the data fields do not cover:

• Photos match the property. Article 7 prohibits ad data that contradicts reality or suggests something inconsistent with the nature of the property. Stock interiors and renders from a different project are the usual culprits. For off-plan, label renders as renders.
• No government or REGA identity. No ministry logos, other government marks or REGA branding unless you have legal basis to use them.
• Claims match the licence. Article 4 allows a licence to be revoked if the application contained false information or the ad’s information differs from the licence. Area, price and handover dates in the copy must match what was licensed.
• Arabic and English say the same thing. If you run both language versions, the price, area and licence number must be identical. Translation drift is a common source of mismatch.

Lead-generation campaigns: where the risk sits

Real estate performance campaigns often optimise for volume: a low “starting from” price, a form with one field, a WhatsApp button. The regulation targets the tactics that inflate that volume. Article 7 prohibits publishing fictitious data to collect the details of market participants or the public, or for any other purpose, and contact details that do not match the licence. Trowers & Hamlins partners Moad Giebaly and Eileen Duncan, writing in Gulf Construction (July 2026), name duplicate or ghost listings used to harvest contacts and artificially low prices used to generate inquiries as the market abuses the rules address.

Translate that into campaign rules:

• No bait listings. Every lead ad must point to a real, licensed property or a licensed project. A generic “villas in north Riyadh from SAR X” ad with no specific licensed property behind it is the pattern to avoid.
• “Starting from” must be real. If the headline price exists, it must exist for an available, licensed unit. When that unit sells, update or pause the ad.
• One property, one live ad. Duplicating the same listing across several ad accounts, pages or brokers to multiply leads is one of the abuses Trowers & Hamlins describe. Agree with partner brokers who publishes what.
• Contact details match the licence. Call-tracking numbers, agency WhatsApp lines and shared lead inboxes need checking against the contact details submitted with the licence application before launch.
• The lead goes to a licensed broker. If an agency or call centre answers inquiries, the spokesperson’s statement that answering inquiries is a real estate activity suggests the first human response should come from the licensed broker or establishment. Agree the routing before the campaign, not after.

For example, a broker running a Snapchat lead campaign for twenty apartments might build one ad per licensed unit type, put each licence number on the end card, send every lead form to the brokerage’s own registered number and email, and set a rule that any unit marked sold in the CRM triggers the ad to pause the same day. Fewer leads arrive, but each one traces to a licensed listing.

Landing pages deserve the same discipline. Each page that receives paid traffic should repeat the licence number and the same facts as the ad, and come down or be updated when the licence expires. If the page template has no fixed place for licence data, that is a website fix to make once, not a manual edit before every launch. For why low-quality forms flood a sales team with unusable leads, see our diagnosis of Facebook lead ads that produce fake leads.

Platform checks you should expect

Article 8 places fifteen obligations on anyone licensed to run an electronic real estate platform. They include technical integration with REGA’s systems, hosting servers inside the Kingdom, verifying advertiser accounts through the national single sign-on (Nafath), refusing unlicensed ads, removing ads when their licence expires, preventing changes to ads after publication, and notifying REGA at least ten working days before ceasing activity. Platforms must also answer REGA’s requests for user information within two working days (Article 8(10), in the text published in Umm Al-Qura and on REGA’s regulation page).

For marketers, that means property portals can be expected to reject, hold or remove ads when the licence data is missing or expired, and to block edits once an ad is live. Build your listing feeds and bulk uploads around the licence number as a required field, and expect accounts to be tied to a verified identity rather than a shared agency login.

One question is not settled by the text we could read: whether general social networks and search engines count as “electronic real estate platforms”. Article 1 defines these as licensed applications or websites that let advertisers publish or market real estate ads, and Article 3 lists social media as a separate channel, which suggests social networks are covered as channels rather than as platforms with Article 8 duties. That is our reading, not a ruling. Confirm it with REGA or your legal adviser, and in any case keep the licence data on every creative you run there.

A licence register for every campaign

The rules are simple to state and hard to keep across dozens of live ads. A shared register, owned by the developer or broker and visible to the agency, keeps them in one place.

Then add three habits: name every ad with its licence number so one filter shows everything tied to a licence; compare live ads against expiry dates and sold units every week; and make “licence number present and correct” a line on the approval form the client signs before anything is published.

If your hoardings, sales centre and brochures also need to carry the same licence data, our guide to real estate project branding and site hoardings covers building a fixed compliance zone into the identity itself.

Penalties, and where the sources disagree

Article 10 says violations are penalised according to the table of violations and penalties in the Implementing Regulations of the Real Estate Brokerage Law. The regulation itself gives no amounts, and we could not open the current table on REGA’s website. The reported ceilings differ:

• Trowers & Hamlins, in Gulf Construction (July 2026), report sanctions under the brokerage law’s Implementing Regulations that include fines of up to SAR 40,000, which may be doubled for repeat offences, and licence cancellation.
• REGA’s spokesperson, speaking to Okaz on 21 April 2026, ten days before the regulation was published, said penalties for misleading real estate ads are applied by severity and repetition, start with a warning, and can reach fines of up to SAR 200,000, which may be doubled for repeat violations, as well as suspension or cancellation of the licence. Okaz reported the same SAR 200,000 ceiling for brokerage violations in August 2023, with doubling for repeats within three years.

The two figures may refer to different violations in the same table, but we could not confirm which applies to which advertising breach against the official schedule. Check it with REGA or your legal adviser. Either way, a non-compliant ad can cost the licence itself.

Getting the campaign set up right

The licence data belongs in the brief, the template and the approval, like the logo. If you are planning a launch or reviewing campaigns already live, a performance marketing setup that ties ad naming, lead routing and end dates to the licence register reduces the risk of a non-compliant ad going out. RX can help structure that system with your sales and legal teams; the licences themselves are always obtained by the licensed broker or developer through REGA’s channels. To look at your current campaigns against this checklist, you can book a business diagnosis session.