Real estate development is a type of business that includes activities ranging from buying old properties, then carrying out renovations on these properties, then selling or renting them. Real estate development also includes buying vacant lands, building properties on them, and transforming drawings and ideas on paper into real estate and cities on the ground. Some real estate developers are turning the desert into global cities.

Real estate development is considered the most general and comprehensive concept in the field of real estate, because it is defined as the process through which the value of the property is raised to eventually produce successful real estate units that suit the needs of the community and benefit the developer.