Driving through Damascus, billboards for new residential developments offer a vision of the future: modern apartments, landscaped surroundings, and the promise of a fresh start.
But for Syrians navigating damaged homes, rising rents, and the cost of returning after years of displacement, the question is how much of that future they can actually afford.
In Qudsaya, west of the capital, Abyat Hills illustrates both the ambitions and the limits of Syria’s investment-led housing drive.
The development brings together Saudi company Abyat Investment and Real Estate Development and Syria’s General Housing Establishment, which operates under the Ministry of Public Works and Housing. Under the partnership, the state provides the land while Abyat develops the buildings and facilities.
Its published subscription contract sets first-phase prices at $950–$1,150 per square metre. On a simple 100-square-metre illustration, that amounts to somewhere between $95,000–$115,000.
These prices are not unprecedented within Damascus’s property market. Listings published by local agency Elmas include a 150-square-metre apartment in Mashrou Dummar, just south of Qudsaya, advertised at $300,000 and a 180-square-metre property in the southwestern neighbourhood of Kafr Souseh at $450,000.
But the relevant comparison for many Syrians is not with another expensive neighbourhood. It is with what they earn.
The European Union Agency for Asylum’s July country report cited February figures putting average monthly wages at roughly $102 for entry-level public-sector employees and $120 in the private sector, indicating the scale of the gulf between locally earned income and the capital required to enter such developments.
"A housing development may attract substantial investment while its residential units remain beyond the financial reach of families who lost their homes, jobs, and savings during the conflict," Fadel Abdulghany, founder and director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, told The New Arab.
"If public reconstruction policies fail to take these families’ needs into account, urban development may expand without contributing sufficiently to the conditions necessary for displaced people to return sustainably."
Investment promises, everyday pressures
The affordability question has become more politically visible as households confront rising living costs.
In September, a government decision to raise diesel prices by 40 percent and petrol prices by approximately 26–28 percent triggered protests and roadblocks across Syria. Demonstrators burned tyres, blocked major routes, and demanded the increases be reversed.
The government subsequently announced cheaper diesel categories for heating, agriculture, and some productive sectors, while leaving the standard diesel price and the higher petrol and gas prices in place.
The fuel protests essentially exposed the economic pressures against which promises of recovery and foreign investment are being judged: whether households can afford transport, heating, and daily necessities, rather than simply whether new projects attract buyers.
For many displaced Syrians, the immediate challenge is even more dire - not about purchasing a new apartment but making their existing home habitable.
Liban Abdullahi Jimale, housing, land and property advisor for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Syria, said families frequently tell the organisation that they want to return but cannot afford repairs.
"The choice is often stark," he told The New Arab.
Some live in damaged properties, pitch tents nearby or repair a single room. Others go back to displacement camps or sites because they offer better shelter than what remains at home.
Renting can also be precarious. According to a sector assessment cited by NRC, rents rose in 84 percent of assessed communities in rural Damascus, with the increases attributed mainly to returns.
NRC’s legal-needs assessment found that only 48 percent of surveyed returnee households reported owning or renting a dwelling, compared with 70 percent across the surveyed population. Around one in five renting returnee households faced eviction risk, mostly because of unpaid rent.
These figures therefore illustrate why increasing the number of apartments does not automatically give displaced families somewhere secure to live.
Whose land, whose recovery?
At Abyat Hills, questions about access to housing have been accompanied by another dispute: the rights of people claiming an interest in the land beneath it.
On 26 September, residents from Qudsaya and other rural Damascus communities protested over expropriation, compensation, and ownership claims concerning land allocated to developments. Some told state news agency SANA that they had received no compensation; others said historical payments were inadequate.
The governorate subsequently opened an office to receive claims concerning land within Abyat Hills and Sham View. The ministry said most contested expropriation decisions dated back decades and that each property’s status had to be established through land records and compensation documents.
It also argued that public housing projects could include commercial components and private partners. Abyat maintained that its work was lawful and that government bodies and courts should settle ownership disputes.
Similar tensions surfaced in Homs, where residents protested over expropriated land they associated with the Boulevard project. The city council said the properties had entered public ownership through legal procedures and were designated as a park under an older approved plan; residents sought a review of the records and compensation arrangements.
For Abdulghany, the danger is that redevelopment can make unresolved claims harder to remedy.
"The greatest risk is that reconstruction projects may consolidate the consequences of past property seizures, making them increasingly difficult to remedy or reverse," he told The New Arab.
Once disputed land is transferred, built on, used as collateral or sold to new purchasers, additional interests and financial obligations can emerge. Recovering an original property may become more complicated even where an earlier claim has a sound legal basis.
More than a new apartment
Abyat Hills’ contract includes measures presented as supporting residential use rather than speculation: one subscription per family, restrictions on transferring subscriptions and controls on resale. It states that the homes are intended for Syrian families. But these provisions do not themselves bridge the gap between a household’s income and the money required to buy.
Nor does building an apartment resolve the documentation problems that can prevent a family from reclaiming a different home.
Abdulghany said lost records, incomplete registration, inheritance disputes, and properties registered in the names of detained or disappeared people continue to obstruct recovery.
"The fundamental distinction is between the legal recognition of rights and enabling rights holders to recover and exercise them in practice," he said.
Families of missing people face a particularly difficult bind when a property remains registered in their relative’s name. Abdulghany said Syrian law allows them to seek a judicial representative without first obtaining a declaration of death, but the representative’s limited powers mean significant property transactions or some legal proceedings may require further court approval.
Women face additional barriers. Abdulghany said SNHR’s July report documented how property confiscations intersected with discriminatory registration practices, inheritance obstacles and economic dependency. For these families, rebuilding a house does not necessarily mean being able to reclaim, manage or securely inhabit it.
Jimale described civil documentation as a foundational need. Missing identity and family-status records can obstruct inheritance claims, access to services and legal proceedings, leaving families navigating expensive and complicated procedures after they return.
The contrast with a fully serviced new development is therefore about more than finishes or sale prices. It is about the conditions that allow people to live somewhere securely.
What should count as recovery?
Private investment can expand housing supply and help finance reconstruction. Abdulghany’s argument is not that commercial development should stop, but that it cannot replace a public response to housing need.
He called for priority to be given to repairing existing neighbourhoods, restoring essential services, strengthening tenure security and developing affordable housing and rental programmes.
Jimale also stressed the need for international financial and technical support, alongside continuing assistance for people who cannot yet return.
"When people return to their areas but lack housing, basic services, livelihood opportunities, or legal documentation, pressure to leave temporary shelters may simply transfer displacement from camps into informal settlements and urban areas rather than resolve it," he said.
Abyat Hills may demonstrate that there are buyers for new housing around Damascus. What it cannot establish on its own is whether families living in damaged homes, struggling with rent or contesting old expropriations are gaining a viable route to recovery.
Agnese is a journalist at The New Arab, with previous experience in breaking news and OSINT investigations across the Middle East
Follow her on X: @AgneseBoffano
Edited by Charlie Hoyle