Property deals to take only 16 days

Property deals in the country will now be concluded within 16 days, unlike in the past when the process was unnecessarily long.

In addition, the government will compensate for all losses incurred in transactions conducted in good faith but based on erroneous information provided by its agencies.

This comes after the Land ministry announced a complete overhaul of the procedural bottlenecks that have been making property transactions take unnecessarily long, discouraging would-be investors in the sector. Thanks to the new procedures, Kenya is now ranked 125 (up from 129) among the 190 member countries of the Property Ranking Database.

Land Communications Director Joseph Kamuto said the improvement was achieved by reorganising the procedures for registering property deals, authenticating them and issuing title deeds for them

Mr Kamuto says the government’s intention of issuing title deeds for all properties, which has so far see it issue 3.2 million title deeds countrywide against a target of 4.5 million by 2022, has also made property transactions more secure.

This, he said, would improve the security of property rights, which will, in turn, lead to increased revenue generation for the government since investors will have the confidence to invest in the country since there is reduced the risk of fraud, given that properties without title deeds will be hard to put up for sale.