NEOM has already emerged as Saudi Arabia’s most desirable place to live, with 72% of people considering buying a home in the giga project. Many want to purchase properties in NEOM purely as an investment. The $500 billion project will also have a virtual twin in the metaverse, where future residents can customize their homes to be replicated in the real world.

Reports suggest that the rising real estate powerhouse will also be home to skyscrapers up to 500 meters tall. These will cover an area of dozens of kilometers horizontally, housing residential, retail and commercial spaces. Designers have reportedly been working on half-a-mile structures, which will be more than 800 meters, and can outsize the world’s tallest building Burj Khalifa, which stands at 828 meters.

The kingdom is already home to the world’s fourth-largest building, the Abraj al-Bait clock tower hotel in Mecca. NEOM is located in the Tabuk province and is expected to cover an area 33 times that of the city of New York. Apart from a car-free, green city called The Line, the project will also be home to mountains called Trojena, offering an outdoor ski resort.

NEOM will also be home to Oxagon, an industrial city floating in the red sea among structural marvels. It’ll be powered entirely by clean energy sources.

Before NEOM was announced, Saudi Arabia had also started work on the Jeddah Tower in 2013, touted as the world’s tallest building, reaching a height of one kilometer. But construction on the project has been stalled since 2019 over labor issues.