The question is usually asked as though the answer were legal. It is mostly commercial. Nothing in the material we could reach stops an Omani bank lending to a foreigner on residential property — but the banks that do it publish a higher salary floor, and at least one major bank publishes an eligibility rule that excludes you outright.
Yes — at three times the Omani salary threshold
This is the most useful paragraph on the subject, so we will be specific. All of the following is from the banks' own product pages, read on 7 August 2026.
| Lender | Lends to expatriates? | Minimum salary |
|---|---|---|
| Bank Muscat (Baituna) | Yes — non-Omani employees in the government sector and listed private companies | OMR 750 non-Omani, OMR 250 Omani |
| Meethaq (Bank Muscat Islamic) | Yes — any Omani national or resident expatriate | OMR 750 expatriate, OMR 250 Omani |
| National Bank of Oman | No — Omani nationals only | OMR 300, Omanis |
| Sohar International | Publishes a product named Housing Finance for Expatriates | Not retrievable |
| Sohar Islamic | Publishes the same product on the Islamic side | Not retrievable |
NBO's housing loan page states eligibility as Omani nationals with a monthly salary of OMR 300 and above, whose employer is on NBO's approved company list, aged 21 to 55 at application with the loan maturing by age 60. There is no expatriate variant on that page. Sohar International and Sohar Islamic both market a product explicitly named for expatriates, but neither page would load for us, so we can confirm the product exists and can tell you nothing about its terms.
Maximum loan OMR 500,000, tenor up to 25 years, rates advertised as starting from 4.5% per annum. Non-Omani applicants must supply passports alongside the usual valuation, krooki and mulkiya, sale agreement and salary assignment letter.
One nationality-linked restriction is spelled out: the financing covers property purchase, villas and apartments in residential or commercial projects, and renovation — but land purchase is for Omani nationals only.
Meethaq finances up to 80% of property value over up to 25 years, and covers purchase, construction and taking over a mortgage from another bank. It publishes no profit rate on the product page, pointing instead to a separate tariff.
The 6% cap you keep reading about is not your mortgage rate
Oman does cap interest. Article 80 of the Commercial Code, Royal Decree 55/1990, entitles a creditor to interest on a commercial loan or debt, determined by agreement "within such limits as the Ministry of Commerce & Industry shall set". The ministry has set that ceiling repeatedly and it has fallen over time — reported as 10% in 2001, 9% in 2006, 8% in 2008, and 6.5% under Ministerial Decision 172/2016 effective 20 July 2016.
The current instrument is Ministerial Decision 409/2025, on determining the return for obtaining a commercial debt or loan, which Chambers dates 2 October 2025 and reports as setting a maximum of 6% per annum. Its immediate predecessor, reported in late 2024, set the same 6% and carried the same crucial carve-out: the return "does not apply to loans provided by banks, finance companies, and asset leasing companies licensed by Oman's Central Bank", and may be exceeded in exceptional cases — long-term loans, developmental projects, high-risk loans — in coordination with the Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The 6% ceiling is a Ministry of Commerce rule for non-bank commercial lending, and it expressly exempts banks, finance companies and leasing companies licensed by the Central Bank of Oman. It does not cap your mortgage, your car loan or your personal loan.
It does bite if you are borrowing from, or lending to, a party that is not a licensed financial institution — a shareholder loan, an inter-company advance, a supplier credit.
The circular we could not read, and why we are telling you
The Central Bank's circulars index lists BM 1213, "Master Circular on Personal Loan and Finance", dated 13 February 2025, together with an annexure of the same date. That is the authoritative document for the retail lending rules — any ceiling on bank personal-loan rates, any loan-to-value requirement, any age rule would live there. We could not retrieve it: every attempt at the Central Bank's document directory failed. So we cannot tell you whether the Central Bank separately caps bank personal-loan interest rates, and we are not going to guess. The document's number and date are citable; ask a bank to show you the relevant clause.
What the Central Bank actually limits
The Central Bank's regulatory framework page does publish hard numbers. Quoted as they appear on the page, read on 7 August 2026:
- "Lending Ratio ceiling (net credit to deposit-base, consisting of customer deposits, own funds and net of money due to and from banks abroad) is 87.5%."
- "Housing Loans of a bank are restricted to 15% of its total credit and other personal loans to 35% of total credit."
- "Maximum tenors are 10 years and 25 years for non-housing personal loans and non-housing loans respectively."
- "Debt Service Ratio cannot exceed 50% and 60%."
- "Single obligator exposure limitation is 15% of the bank's net worth."
- "Aggregate exposure to all connected and all related persons cannot exceed 600% of net worth."
Two of those sentences are not clean. The tenor sentence is internally garbled — it says "non-housing personal loans and non-housing loans", which cannot be right. Read against every bank product page we checked, which offer 25-year housing loans and 10-year personal loans, the intended meaning is 10 years for personal lending and 25 years for housing.
The debt service sentence gives two numbers and does not say which is which. The Central Bank has clarified separately, as reported in the regional press, that the maximum deduction from salary is 50% for a personal loan and 60% for a housing loan. That allocation is corroborated first-hand: NBO's own housing loan page states a debt burden ratio of 60%, excluding life insurance premiums.
One conflict to note. The framework page's 15% housing plus 35% other personal caps sum to 50% of total credit. Press reporting of the Central Bank's position instead describes personal loans as not exceeding 40% of the total value of bank credit. The two do not reconcile on the face of it and we are not going to invent a reading that makes them agree.
Nothing on the Central Bank's public pages sets a maximum loan-to-value ratio for housing loans. The 80% you will see quoted is what NBO and Meethaq each choose to lend, published as their own product terms.
If a source tells you Oman caps LTV at 80% for a first home and 85% for a national, that is the UAE central bank's rule and it has nothing to do with Oman. UAE mortgage material dominates search results for this question and is the single most common contamination in Omani property advice.
What arranging a mortgage costs
These are from the lenders' own published schedules. The pattern is more useful than any single figure: processing is about OMR 50 plus VAT, early settlement is about 1%, and valuation is charged at cost. That consistency holds across conventional and Islamic lenders.
| Charge | Amount | Lender and schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Processing, housing | OMR 52.500 | Bank Muscat; Bank Dhofar, January 2026 |
| Processing, housing | OMR 50 excluding VAT | National Bank of Oman |
| Processing, property finance | OMR 50 (52.500 with VAT) | Bank Nizwa, 9 February 2026 |
| Processing, personal loan | OMR 26.250 | Bank Muscat; Bank Dhofar, January 2026 |
| Prepayment | 1.05% of the amount prepaid | Bank Muscat |
| Early settlement | 1.05% of the foreclosed amount, minimum OMR 5.000 | Bank Dhofar, January 2026 |
| Early settlement | Up to 1% of outstanding principal | Bank Nizwa, 9 February 2026 |
| Prepayment on transfer to another bank | 1% of outstanding | National Bank of Oman |
| Valuation | Actual cost plus OMR 10.500 | Bank Dhofar, January 2026 |
| Valuation | As per actuals | Bank Nizwa, 9 February 2026 |
| Mortgage creation, paid to the Ministry of Housing | 0.5% | National Bank of Oman |
| Credit life insurance | 0.05% of the loan, minimum OMR 5.250, maximum OMR 78.750 | Bank Muscat |
| Late payment | 1% over the agreed interest rate | Bank Muscat |
Note the one charge on that list that is not the bank's: NBO's 0.5% mortgage creation fee is paid to the Ministry of Housing, not retained by the lender. And note what is missing — a rate. Bank Muscat advertises "from 4.5% p.a."; NBO publishes no rate at all and tells you to call the branch; Meethaq publishes no profit rate on its product page. For most Omani mortgage products there is no published price, which is itself worth knowing before you assume you can compare lenders from your laptop.
Islamic home finance gives you a co-owner, not a lender
Meethaq structures home financing as diminishing musharaka. You and the bank become co-owners of the property. Your payments do two things at once: they buy units of the bank's share, and they pay rent on the portion the bank still owns. As your share grows the rent element shrinks. There is no interest, because there is no loan.
That is not a labelling difference. It changes what you own during the term and how you get out. Bank Nizwa's published schedule makes the exit explicit: for diminishing musharaka, "sale of the property to the customer will be at outstanding amount plus 1%" of that amount. You are buying the bank's remaining share, not discharging a charge over your own title.
Because the bank is a co-owner rather than a chargeholder, the exit is a sale transaction, with the 1% priced into it at Bank Nizwa, rather than a release of security.
Meethaq will finance taking over a mortgage from another bank, so moving between conventional and Islamic structures is a product they sell, not an anomaly.
Early settlement pricing is comparable either way — around 1% of the outstanding amount at every lender whose schedule we read.
Which property can an expatriate actually mortgage?
Foreign ownership of Omani real estate runs through Royal Decree 12/2006, the system of ownership of real estate by non-Omanis in integrated tourism complexes, published in Official Gazette 810 on 1 March 2006 and consolidated up to Royal Decree 76/2010. We confirmed the decree exists and what it is called. We could not read its articles — the consolidated text is behind a subscription — so we cannot quote what it says about mortgaging.
Our property guides state that usufruct property cannot be mortgaged, because banks require clear title. We were not able to re-verify that against the primary text in this research, so treat it as this site's existing position rather than something we have confirmed today. If it matters to your transaction, have the specific title checked before you apply for finance rather than after.
Now the striking part. No bank product page we read states that an expatriate mortgage must be over property in an integrated tourism complex. Bank Muscat's Baituna page lists its eligible uses — purchase, villas and apartments in residential or commercial projects, renovation — and the only nationality-linked property restriction it publishes is that land purchase is for Omani nationals only. The ITC condition, which every advisory article treats as the governing rule, does not appear in the lenders' own published terms.
Two readings are possible. Either the banks are silent because the ownership rules do the work upstream — an expatriate can only be buying something they may lawfully own — or the products are drafted more broadly than the advice suggests.
We cannot tell you which, and neither can any source we found. Ask the lender, in writing, what title types it will accept, before you pay a valuation fee.
Business lending: Sharakah publishes the only real numbers
For a foreign-owned Omani company looking for growth finance outside the commercial banks, Sharakah — the Fund for Development of Youth Projects — publishes the most transparent product terms in Omani SME finance. Read on 7 August 2026:
| Product | Amount | Pricing and term |
|---|---|---|
| Term loan | OMR 10,000 to 350,000 | 5% base plus risk premium up to 3%; maximum 6 years including moratorium |
| Growth equity | OMR 100,000 to 350,000 | Sharakah takes a 10% to 49% shareholding; exit within 6 years |
| Bill discounting | OMR 25,000 to 200,000 | 5%; up to 120 days |
| Invoice factoring | OMR 100,000 to 500,000 | 7.2% to 14.4%; up to 120 days |
| Sharakah Ventures | OMR 10,000 to 50,000 | Pre-seed and seed equity |
| Sharia-compliant products | OMR 10,000 to 350,000 | Ijara, musharakah, murabaha, wakalah; up to 6 years |
- Term loan — promoter contribution of 33% for new projects and 20% for existing ones; total project cost must not exceed OMR 2 million; a viable business plan and employment generation.
- Growth equity — 51% promoter contribution against Sharakah's 49%; operating for at least three years; a positive financial track record and a clear exit strategy.
- Bill discounting — the business must have existed for at least one year, supply to large organisations, and produce audited financials.
- Invoice factoring — seller at least one year old, previously profitable, no defaults; the purchaser must have turnover above OMR 5 million a year and a good payment record.
None of Sharakah's published product pages states a nationality or Omani-ownership condition. Given the fund's name and mandate, that is far more likely to be an omission than an opening, and we are not going to read it as one.
Confirm before you build a plan on it: +968 24 47 93 00, info@sharakah.om. Ask specifically whether a company with foreign shareholders is eligible, and ask for the answer in writing.
State-backed finance: what we could not establish
Development Bank
The Central Bank lists Development Bank SAOC among the locally incorporated banks. Its mandate, per a company profile, is development financing across agriculture, fisheries, livestock, industry, information technology, education, health and tourism, acting as a government agent for soft loans. Its own website did not resolve on any address we tried, so its current programmes, ceilings, rates — and decisively, whether foreign-owned companies qualify — are unverified here.
Al Raffd Fund
Al Raffd Fund's public web presence no longer resolves. We could not reach the site at any address, and the legal databases returned nothing readable on its current status. It is widely said to have been folded into another institution. We are not going to repeat that, because we could not verify it. If a consultant tells you Al Raffd will fund your project, ask them to show you the fund's current application channel before you plan around it.
An SME credit guarantee scheme
We could not identify a national SME credit guarantee scheme in Oman from any official source. The nearest Central Bank instrument is a January 2025 circular setting sectoral lending targets with capital relief for the banks — reported as BM 1212, requiring targets by 31 December 2030 across agriculture and fisheries, renewable energy, technology, healthcare and education. That is an incentive aimed at bank balance sheets, not a guarantee offered to a borrower. If a guarantee scheme exists, it is not published where a business owner would find it.
Security and personal guarantees
No Omani bank published anything we could read about the collateral or personal guarantees it requires from a foreign-owned company. The business lending pages of the two largest banks either returned errors or showed navigation only. This is a real gap and we would rather say so than describe a market norm we have not sourced.
What we will say is what not to do: do not assume Omani practice from UAE or Saudi practice. The regulators are different, the security registration systems are different, and the enforcement route is different — Oman now has a dedicated Investment and Commerce Court, reported as operational from 1 October 2025 under Royal Decree 35/2025, with 90-day decision timelines. Any advice that arrives with a reference to the UAE central bank or a Saudi regulator has told you it is about somewhere else.
A stale document still live on a bank's own site
Bank Muscat's home loans offer PDF states eligibility as "Omanis only", with rates of 4.5% for government and quasi-government employees and 4.75% for approved private sector tier 1, over 300 months. It also says the offer is valid up to 31 December 2022. It is still on the bank's website. The live Baituna product page contradicts it and admits non-Omanis at OMR 750. This is exactly the kind of document that seeds wrong advice — a first-party bank PDF, findable in search, expired for years, and read by consultants who then tell foreigners they cannot get a mortgage in Oman. Check the date on any bank PDF before you believe it, including the ones we have cited.
Can an expat get a mortgage in Oman?
Is there a 6% cap on loan interest rates in Oman?
What is the maximum loan-to-value on a mortgage in Oman?
What does it cost to arrange a mortgage in Oman?
How is Islamic home finance different in Oman in practice?
Can a foreign-owned company get a government-backed loan in Oman?
Our office in Al Ghubra does not arrange finance and does not introduce lenders. What we do handle is the paperwork underneath an application — resident cards, salary and employment letters, attestations and translations of foreign documents, and the Ministry of Housing transactions that sit alongside a property purchase. If you are assembling a file for a bank, that is the part we can take off you.