Real estate developments in residential architecture: a case study of Jeddah

Abstract Home should be a place for social activities that satisfy both physical and social needs. Real estate developers in Jeddah currently show little consideration for cultural and social patterns of users in residential interior layouts. Therefore, this study aims to investigate apartments released by real estate developers in Jeddah from users’ perspectives. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are applied through in-depth interviews with 21 participants. The interviews investigate participants’ satisfaction, desire to make changes, reasons for making changes, and reasons for not making changes. This study finds that the majority of participants want to make changes to the layout of their homes owing to social activities. The SPSS analysis shows that most participants are less satisfied with the home layouts of RED than homes that are self-built, with a statistical significance of P = 0.002. This study recommends that RED companies should consider open spaces when designing apartments for sale so as to allow users to divide the interior layouts of reception and living zones according to their needs. In order to achieve this by RED, the study recommends more study by electrical engineer for electricity switches location, architects for window location, and construction engineers for column arrangement.