Is Off-Plan Property Safe in Oman? The 2026 Escrow Law Explained
Updated July 2026 · By Waleed Al Abri — Real Estate Advisor
Safer than it used to be, not risk-free. Since 10 March 2026, Royal Decree 79/2025 requires every off-plan project to hold buyer payments in an escrow account at a licensed bank, released only against certified construction progress. The protection is real, but it is not a completion guarantee. Verify the escrow before you pay. Updated July 2026 by Waleed Al Abri, a real estate advisor in Oman.
Waleed Al Abri
Real Estate Advisor
Waleed Property - Founder & Principal Advisor
Focus areas:
Waleed works with foreign and GCC buyers in Oman's property market. Most of the work is the part non-Omani buyers get stuck on: which areas allow foreign ownership, the difference between ITC freehold and usufruct, whether a property gets you residency, and how off-plan payments are protected.
Covers: Al Mouj Muscat, Sultan Haitham City, designated foreign-ownership areas, and residency through property.
The law changed in March 2026, and most guides missed it
Most articles you will find online still point to Royal Decree 30/2018 as the law protecting off-plan buyers in Oman. That law is repealed. If a guide quotes it as current, the guide is out of date.
The new law is Royal Decree 79/2025, the Real Estate Regulation Law. It took effect on 10 March 2026 and replaced three older laws at once: the 2018 escrow law, the 1986 brokerage law, and the 1989 apartment ownership law. One law now covers the whole chain.
| Old law (RD 30/2018, repealed) | New law (RD 79/2025, in force 10 Mar 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Repealed | The law in force today |
| Scope | Escrow accounts only | Escrow, brokerage, and apartment ownership in one framework |
| Developer entry | Open an escrow account | Licence and financial guarantees required BEFORE launching a project, plus ongoing disclosures |
| Contracts | Not covered | Every off-plan contract must be registered in the real estate register |
| Enforcement | Ministry administrative route | Ministry of Housing with judicial enforcement powers, criminal penalties, and licence revocation |
How the escrow protects your money
The mechanics are simple, and they matter.
- • Your payments go into an escrow account held in the project's name at a licensed bank. Not into the developer's own account.
- • The developer can only withdraw against construction milestones, certified by the project's consultant. No progress, no money.
- • The account is protected from seizure. Nobody can garnish it except by court order.
- • Under the current executive rules, 5% of each unit's value stays in the account for one year after your unit is registered, to cover defects.
This is the single biggest difference between buying off-plan in Oman today and buying five years ago. The money follows the concrete.
Escrow protects your money. Registration protects your title.
These are two different problems, and off-plan buyers routinely solve only the first. On 18 May 2026 the new Real Estate Registry Law came into force under Royal Decree 56/2026, replacing the 1998 statute. It recognises a preliminary register that documents off-plan sales and development projects, so buyers of units that are not yet registered are inside the system rather than outside it.
It also keeps the rule that decides who actually owns the unit: a transaction only takes effect against third parties once it is registered. Until then you hold a personal obligation from the seller, not ownership anyone else has to respect. That is the risk escrow was never designed to cover.
The law also defines the title deed, gives an electronic deed the same legal force as a paper one, and lets a deed be issued in English on request. The executive regulations setting out how this works in practice have not been published yet. Until they are, existing rules continue to apply.
What escrow does not do
I sell off-plan property, and I will still tell you this plainly.
- • Escrow is not a completion guarantee. It controls the flow of money. It does not force a project to finish.
- • Escrow is not title. Your unit becomes yours through registration, not through the escrow account.
- • If the developer goes bankrupt, you have no special priority. You stand with the other ordinary creditors. The escrow rules make that scenario less likely; they do not make it painless.
So the law does its part. The rest is on you, before you sign.
The 5 checks before you pay any deposit
There is no public website yet where you can look up a project's escrow status. So you check it the direct way:
- Ask the developer for its licence from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, and the project's registration. Both are mandatory under the new law.
- Ask for the escrow account details: the bank's name and an account in the project's name. A separate account per project.
- Never pay into a personal account or the developer's general company account. If they push for it, walk away.
- Confirm the payment clause in your sale contract names that same escrow account.
- Treat heavy advertising as a soft signal, not proof. Advertising spend from escrow is capped and needs ministry approval, so a project selling hard on borrowed glamour deserves a second look.
I run these checks for clients before any deposit. It takes a phone call and two documents. Skipping it is how people get hurt.
What is still settling
The law is new. Two things to know:
- • The detailed executive regulations are still being written. Until they issue, the 2019 executive rules keep applying. Expect the new regulations by around March 2027, and expect some mechanics to change with them.
- • Projects sold before the law had a window to register their existing contracts. If you bought pre-2026, ask the developer whether your contract is now in the real estate register. That one question tells you a lot.
Related reading: Can foreigners buy property in Oman? and Oman residency by property. I re-check this page quarterly and update it when the regulations land.
Frequently asked questions
The law reads well on paper. Whether a specific project actually has its licence, its registration, and a real escrow account is a different question, and it is answerable in a day. Before you pay any deposit, I verify those three things for clients.