I work with individuals landing here, with enterprises placing hundreds, and with the real estate and hospitality groups building the supply. Deep market network, sixteen years of context, and the AI and automation stack behind it.
Compound, neighbourhood, school, clinic, network. High-touch, one at a time, from the first call to the first ninety days. The kind of landing where the details matter and the decisions are hard to reverse.
HR teams, Vision 2030 entities, multinational headquarters. Bulk housing programmes across compound, apartment, and staff accommodation stock. Sourcing, contracting, and ongoing operations, delivered as a managed programme rather than a set of transactions.
Compound operators, developers, and hotel groups navigating the residential category as it institutionalises. Positioning, operating model, capital structure, foreign LP conversations. The paper below is the framework I use.
A thirteen-page framework for institutional capital allocators evaluating Saudi residential. The parallel to US multifamily in the mid-1980s, the two talent flows running through Riyadh, the compound stock as the wedge, and the operator constraint that is currently being resolved.
Capital is plentiful. Supply is plentiful. Demand is plentiful. The constraint is the operator.READ THE PAPER · PDF
The conversation to have now is the relationship. The capital deployment is twenty-four months out.
An hour with Carly Overman and Vesna Petrovic on the 2009 arrival, the Facebook message that changed the summer, flynas through the Arab Spring, and what actually goes wrong when families land in Riyadh without a plan.
The variable that determines who thrives past year two is not the compound, the school, or the package.
In 2011 I was running revenue management for flynas when the Arab Spring began. It is still the most useful education I have received.
The most common mistake when relocating to Riyadh is a sequencing mistake. What to do in your first three months, and what not to sign.
Making friends in Riyadh and building a social life comes down to one thing. What seventeen years on the ground taught me.
Google told me not to come to Saudi Arabia in 2009. It was wrong about almost everything. What expat life in Riyadh actually looks like.
Three patterns that break foreign operators in year one. Access versus traction, the hiring trap, and why month fourteen is when most people quit too early.
Why a fractional executive in Riyadh costs more than the equivalent in London. The structural reasons nobody discusses openly.
Four communities. Close to a thousand households. The honest account of what building residential infrastructure in Riyadh actually required.
Field notes on Saudi Arabia, relocation, and building here. New pieces regularly.
Email or LinkedIn. I read everything and reply within a few days to the things I can usefully help with.