RIYADH — The monthly report issued by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) revealed that residential new mortgages for individuals until April 2020 reached 89,345 contracts, valued nearly SR40 billion, provided by all real estate financing institutions and banks, until April 2020. They registered a growth of 95% in the number of loans and about 85% in loans compared to the same period of 2019. According to the report, individual mortgage loans in April 2020 increased 24% by 17,791 contracts offered to individuals by banks and financing institutions. It was worth SR7.7 billion with 20% of increase comparing to April 2019, that recorded 14,398 contracts with a value of 6.4 billion. In April, residential villas acquired the largest portion of funding with 6,329 billion, or about 82% of the total funding provided by banks and financing companies. Residential apartments came in second with 1,043 billion (14%). Residential lands come in third with 295 million (4%). According to SAMA, real estate mortgage in 2019 jumped 3 times in a historical performance with 179,217 contracts with value of SR79,128 billion comparing to that offered in 2018 of 50,496 contracts with a value of SR29.5 billion, in 2017 about 30,833 contracts with value of SR21,025 billion, while 2016 was about 22,259 contracts worth SR17,096 billion. — SG