The government has embarked on documenting thousands of acres of land earmarked for affordable housing projects to facilitate funding and transfer of units to homebuyers.
Officials from the State Department of Lands as well as that of Housing and Urban Development have been sent to the site to ensure that title documents are in order before completion.
This will avoid past experiences where the government has been forced to defend ownership of public property in court, while beneficiaries of past housing projects have been locked out of housing loans because of lack of titles.
“There are teams out there from State Departments for Housing, Lands, and others who are regularising all issues about land ownership,” Sheila Waweru, the acting chief executive of the Affordable Housing Board, said in an interview. “This is because [in the past] we have known that government land is government land and no one will take it, but there have been cases where individuals have claimed ownership of public land.”
In March 2022, the Ministry of Lands shocked lawmakers when it revealed that some 1,500 public properties in Nairobi alone lacked titles, underscoring the historic challenge of titling public land, which has left parcels open to "land grabbing" cartels.
The properties included the iconic Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), the Nairobi County Government-owned Pumwani Maternity Hospital, and Uhuru and Central parks.
The government has identified about 12,000 acres of land under national and county governments for the construction of affordable houses, targeting at least 200,000 units per year.
Under the Affordable Housing Programme, the government is building social housing [bed-sitters] for people earning less than Sh20,000 per month, affordable housing for workers earning between Sh20,000 and Sh149,000 and affordable middle class housing for those earning more than Sh149,000.
About 124,000 houses are at various stages of construction in different parts of the country, with 4,888 units expected to be ready for occupancy by June.
“The titling is important because once these units are completed, the ownership of the land and units will be transferred to the board,” Ms Waweru said. “The board will then process sectional titles for each and every unit. So if you own the unit, you will have the title in your name.”
The processing of sectional titles began less than five years ago, following the enactment of the Sectional Properties Act, 2020.
Prior to this, the Act did not provide for the issuance of title deeds for properties that were not on the ground.
The sectional title deeds will be important in enabling prospective homeowners under the programme to access government-backed subsidised home loans facilitated by the Kenya Mortgage Finance Company.
The KMRC, which is 25.3 percent owned by the state, said homebuyers in previous affordable housing projects, such as the 1,370-unit Park Road project in Nairobi's Ngara area, initially struggled to access loans to complete payments due to the lack of titles.
“The [land] registration process still takes time. There are also titling issues. If there’s no title and that is the security that’s held [by banks or saccos], then you will not be able to refinance that loan,” KMRC chief executive Johnson Oltetia said in a past interview.
Registering property in Kenya is one of the most arduous among Africa's major economies, taking an average of 43.5 days across 10 procedures in 2019, compared with an average of nine steps in sub-Saharan Africa, according to previous surveys.
There have been reports of brazen corruption in land registration and titling for years, with officials often accused of hiding files to delay processing in order to take bribes.
To reduce corruption, the Ministry of Lands has been digitising land records through the installation of the National Land Information Management System (NLIMS).
