El-Sisi ends months-long property freeze over Egypt’s largest endowment

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Wednesday ordered the suspension of a land registry directive that had frozen property transactions on more than 421,000 feddans claimed by the Prince Mostafa Abdel-Mannan endowment, widely described as the largest charitable endowment in Egypt’s history. The decision ends a months-long freeze that disrupted dealings for hundreds of thousands of citizens across Damietta, Dakahliya and Kafr El-Sheikh, while leaving the underlying ownership dispute unresolved.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced in an official statement that the directive annulled Technical Notice No. 8 of 2026, in a move intended to protect citizens’ rights and remove obstacles to real estate transactions.

The Real Estate Registration and Notarization Authority followed the presidential order on Wednesday by issuing Technical Notice No. 13 of 2026, formally suspending the previous notice and lifting its restrictions on registration procedures and property transactions. The move allows citizens to resume normal dealings while preserving the rights of the state and endowment funds.

The dispute dates to May, when the land registry circulated a directive prohibiting transactions involving more than 421,000 feddans (about 1,750 square kilometers), or about 7% of Egypt’s total agricultural land, after the Endowments Authority claimed the land belonged to the Abdel-Mannan waqf.

The land is distributed across three governorates: more than 256,000 feddans in Kafr El-Sheikh, around 89,000 in Damietta, including most areas west of the Nile and the cities of Ras El-Bar and New Damietta, and nearly 74,000 in Dakahliya.

The decision triggered a dispute between the ministries of housing and endowments. Al Manassa previously reported that the Housing Ministry accused the Endowments Authority of relying on a “forged title deed,” which a criminal court had declared invalid and forged in a final 1994 judgment. The ministry maintained that the land on which New Damietta was built had been allocated by presidential decrees and was state property. The Endowments Authority, meanwhile, demanded a share of the proceeds from land sales, citing its role as trustee of the waqf.

The dispute later reached the State Council’s General Assembly of the Fatwa and Legislation Departments, which concluded that it lacked jurisdiction, finding that waqf assets were private property subject to the civil courts. The ruling left the crisis unresolved administratively and legally.

The ban disrupted the property market and the wider economy, prompting growing parliamentary concern. MPs, including Diaa El-Din Dawood and Abdel-Moneim Imam, submitted urgent statements and requests for briefings, warning that the restrictions had paralyzed real estate transactions and obstructed implementation of the building violations reconciliation law.

Lawmakers said the ban threatened to derail more than 50,000 building violation reconciliation applications in Damietta alone because of the Endowments Authority’s claims. It also disrupted efforts to regularize property status and transactions involving state-owned private property. The presidential directive lifts the restrictions, reopening property registration and restoring legal certainty for citizens across the three governorates.