The nightmare of owning property back home for Kenyans in diaspora

property

Purchasing property back home has been a stressful and challenging journey for thousands of Kenyans in the diaspora, whom have been fleeced by their loved ones or conmen.

Photo credit: File

In 2019 alone, Kenyans in the diaspora remitted over 26 billion shillings back home. The remittances now account for four per cent of the GDP, which means they are slowly edging closer to becoming the country’s largest source of foreign exchange earnings.

Real estate continues to grow and this can be attributed to the fact that Kenyans living abroad can buy a land or a home at the click of a button.

Purchasing property back home has been a stressful and challenging journey for thousands of Kenyans in the diaspora, whom have been fleeced by their loved ones or conmen. This has made many lose hope of ever owning property in Kenya or having their projects incomplete.

The most important take-away for Kenyans living abroad is to ensure they work with trusted banks and credible real estate agents/developers since it is devastating to lose one’s hard-earned cash to swindlers, due to lack of due diligence.

Becoming a property owner from any part of the world is easy.

The most important factor is to ensure due diligence is done, either by the individual or by a trusted land selling company.

Legal procedures

Understand the legal procedures before investing the money in either a home or land. When living in Kenya or away from the country, it is advisable not to downplay the significance of legal procedures when it comes to buying or selling a house.

At only Sh500, one can conduct a search at the Lands Registry to establish details of the land. This includes the registered owner of the land, acreage as well as any caveats registered against the title deed. In addition, it is important to pay a visit to city council offices for instance if the property you want is in Nairobi County.

After this, get two maps from the Land Ministry and visit the site accompanied by the seller to verify dimensions. For people in the diaspora, get someone you trust to go over the legal technicalities on your behalf or ensure.

Buy land in satellite towns such as Thika, Juja, Kiambu among others. Check out Our Properties to see our portfolio of affordable land in satellite towns. Note that development in these satellite towns is really on a fast pace and do not look at lack of graded or tarmac roads, piped water or electricity as a hindrance. Owning such land is good as it requires no maintenance fee, especially for speculation.

Small developments

Explore remote areas that are further away from towns. In a few years, you can be pleasantly surprised to find the value of your land has transformed significantly. Notice how foreigners come to Kenya, and buy cheap land in remote areas. After making small developments in these areas, they then sell the same land back to Kenyans at a high price.

A simple verification of title deeds can help you avoid conmen.

Most properties in Kenya can now be bought through installments. For instance, at Lesedi, we have flexible payment periods on our properties, both land and homes, and our recent project LCL that allows members to pay for land in installments of up to 3 years!

Rates for property in Kenya change every 3-6 months and areas that were once labeled as “affordable” are now expensive as populations keep rising and competition rife. This can only reinforce the fact that land only appreciates.

Lesedi group caters for your needs through offering prime land and affordable homes through a reduced-labour intense process with integrity. For so many other Kenyans like you who live away from home, owning a piece of real estate whether it is land or a house seems an unattainable dream.

Banks are often unwilling to fund these endeavors for various reasons ranging from mistrusting the applicant or offering sky-high rates. Well, lay aside the horror stories, the misgivings and all the other hurdles you have encountered or heard of so far since we are here to help.