Estate agents urged to ride on affordable housing plan

EARB Chairperson Eunice Macharia. [Denis Kibuchi, Standard] Estate agents have been challenged to take advantage of the affordable housing programme and be part of the journey. The government plans to construct 200,000 affordable houses across the country per year to meet the huge demand and increase mortgages from the current 30,000 to a million. "One completed, the units will require property and estate agents to oversee management of common areas and shared services," said then Cabinet Secretary Ministry of Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development Zacharia Mwangi last week. CS Mwangi is now incharge of the Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation after a Cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday last week. "Estate agents will also be crucial in sourcing suitable financiers since Kenyans will seek guidance on available mortgage products," he said during a conference in Nairobi on Friday in a speech read on his behalf by Housing Secretary Said Athman. "This will help empower Kenyans in this journey on affordable housing and on our end we ask you to be our ambassadors." He said the government has embarked on digitising land records to safeguard investments in land. "To this end, the ministry is finalising Nairobi County digital land records and later launch them to other 46 counties." The conference was organised by the Estate Agents Registration Board (EARB). The meeting, which was themed, "Re-engineering real estate for emerging realities," brought together more than 400 real estate agents to deliberate on challenges and opportunities in the profession. Mr Athman in his remarks said it is unfortunate that estate agents are not on the discussion table on affordable housing and urged them to increase their participation. "Real estate agents are a critical part of the affordable housing programme in the conceptualisation stage, design, management and maintenance. Regrettably, they have been slow on boarding that train," he said. "For instance, Starehe Point, where we plan to build 6,000 units, we have not received proposals on what kind of technology they will use to manage." The call comes at a time when TransNzoia County Senator Allan Chesang has moved the Real Estate Regulation & Development Bill, 2023, that seeks to regulate property developers, land buying companies and estate agents together. EARB has opposed the Bill, saying they are already regulated under Estate Agents Act, Cap 533 and should not be grouped together with land buyers and developers. Athman said the government has not declared its position on the Bill, but said the government is already in the process of coming up with a Bill for developers and said they will be engaging the Senator to see if the Bills can be merged. EARB Chairperson Eunice Macharia asked investors to be cautious and carry out due diligence when investing in land, and challenged the government to guaranteed the sanctity of a title deed. "The document given by the chief land registrar should be genuine because we have seen cases where developers issue title deeds to land buyers only to find out that it was government land and have to give it back," she said. On service charge, where some developers have used it to fleece tenants, Ms Macharia said the fee is regulated in the Sectional Property Act. "We have some companies that maybe own over 50 per cent of the units thus own majority shareholding or have not transferred the title deeds to buyers, and determine how much service charge is paid by everyone else and that is when they are able to con tenants." The Act does provide for the division of buildings into units to be owned by individual proprietors and common property to be owned by proprietors of the units as tenants in common.

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