Buying property in Egypt as a foreigner

Foreign buyers can and do own property in Egypt, and the Red Sea coast in particular has long been built around international ownership. The detail matters more than the headline, though - rules differ by property type and location, and the smoothest purchases are the ones where the groundwork is done before any reservation is signed. This guide sets out how KÂMO Property Group represents foreign buyers, in plain terms.

We act for our client, not the listing. That means we compare stock across communities, read pricing against the wider market, and flag the practical questions - title, payment route, handover - that decide whether a purchase is sound. You can browse current listings or read our Red Sea guide alongside this one.

Ownership and the purchase process

Egyptian law permits foreign individuals to own residential property, subject to conditions that vary with unit type and whether a development sits on freehold or a long-term usufruct. Resort and master-planned communities along the Red Sea are generally structured with international buyers in mind, which is one reason the coast is a natural entry point. We confirm the exact ownership basis of any specific unit before you commit.

A typical purchase moves from reservation, to a sale-and-purchase contract, to registration, with staged payments in between. Off-plan and resale follow different rhythms - see our off-plan vs resale guide. Throughout, we keep the paperwork and the developer or seller honest to the agreed terms.

Currency, payment, and due diligence

Pricing on prime coastal stock is increasingly quoted in US dollars or euros, while local transactions settle in Egyptian pounds; how you fund a purchase affects both timing and total cost. We help you plan the payment route rather than discover it at signing.

Due diligence is where private representation earns its place: assessing the seller or developer, reviewing available documentation, service charges, and the handover condition you are actually buying — and coordinating qualified independent legal specialists for formal title verification. We also coordinate multilingual support so nothing is lost in translation.

For German-speaking buyers: how Egypt maps to what you know

If your reference point is a German or Austrian purchase, the honest starting fact is that Egypt has neither a Notar nor a Grundbuch in the sense you are used to. There is no notary who supervises the transaction and holds funds in escrow, and no single state register whose entry is itself constitutive of ownership. Contract validity rests on the sale-and-purchase contract; the strongest forms of security are registration through the Shahr Aqari (the real-estate publicity department) or a court action validating the seller's signature - our guide to how property registration in Egypt actually works explains both, including why a large share of Egyptian property is held securely on contract without full registration.

Payment differs the same way: off-plan installments go to the developer against contract milestones - there is no Notaranderkonto - which is why the developer's delivery record and the contract's delivery and default clauses carry the weight a notary's supervision carries at home. And where a German purchase can stack broker, notary, and Grunderwerbsteuer to around a tenth of the price, Egyptian buying costs are structured differently - itemized here - with the registration step and its cost typically following handover rather than preceding it.

KÂMO advises in German, English, and Arabic - operations advisor Larissa Pagan, after an operations career with multinational companies in Germany, handles German-language coordination. We put every figure in writing with its source and date, precisely because a buyer used to a notarized system deserves to know exactly which protections exist here, which do not, and what stands in for them.

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