RIYADH: As many as 27,994 Saudi families have benefitted from Sakani’s housing options and financing solutions offered electronically by the program in the first quarter of 2023, Saudi Press Agency reported. Last month, 10,606 Saudi families benefitted from the program, of which 9,089 families were allotted their first homes. From January to July 2022, the number of families benefiting from the program reached 87,467. This development comes amid joint efforts to elevate housing affordability in the Kingdom to achieve the objectives of the Housing Program, one of the Saudi Vision 2030 programs. Founded in 2017 by the Saudi Ministry of Housing and the Real Estate Development Fund, the Sakani Program aims to increase the proportion of Saudi households that own a house to 70 percent by 2030. The core aims of the Sakani Program are to enable homeownership in the Kingdom by creating new housing stock, assigning plots and homes to citizens and providing financing for their purchases. The program reached out to people over multiple channels such as Twitter, Whatsapp Business and its website. It offered services, including real estate consultancy, tax certificates, quotes from financial agencies and issuance of electronic land records, to name a few. The program also offers facilities such as the electronic issuance of building permits and financing. Ongoing initiatives implemented by the government, including access to finance and regulations standardizations, are reforming the housing market and improving access for Saudi families, according to a report from PwC Middle East. The report stated that Saudi Arabia’s housing demand stood at 99,600 houses in 2021 and is expected to increase by more than 50 percent to reach 153,000 homes by 2030. Last September, the Kingdom offered 2,957 free plots for eight housing schemes under the Sakani Program distributed across five regions: Riyadh, the Eastern Province, Madinah, Makkah and Asir.