When acquiring land in Kenya, there are steps or a process you can follow to ensure a seamless experience on this road of owning your property yourself. The reason why you should strictly follow the required process is major to avoid losing your money to cons or finding yourself on the wrong side of the law.
It is important to understand they are different steps to follow when buying different properties, for example, buying a car has a different process from buying land. Here, we will look at the steps to follow when getting land.
Process of buying land in Kenya
One of the most important properties you can own in Kenya is land, it can be for residential purposes, business or even an investment. Here are the steps to follow when acquiring land:
- Search for the land- this is the first thing you should do. When looking for land, you should consider its location, the place should be favorable with regard to your intended use. For example, is the land too far from your workplace? Or are there availability of customers for those who want to start a business? If it is for farming purposes, is the climate favorable? Answering this and similar questions will help you have a clear picture of the land you want
- View the land- you might have known about the land through referrals, if so, you will have to make sure you visit the site and inspect the land. During the visit, you should ensure that the land ticks all the requirements you had. This might include the availability of schools, clean water, good roads and more.
- Do a land search- this is a very important step, the purpose is to verify if the seller owns this piece of land. The seller should provide you with the Title deed. After you do the search, you will get the results of the owner and information on whether there are pending cases after about three days.
- Clearing of pending land rates- if there are existing land rates, the seller should clear them to ensure you are not fined for these pending rates.
- Make a sales agreement- after verifying that the seller owns the land and there are no pending cases, proceed to agree on the price, and payment terms and have this written in a sales agreement. This agreement should involve the buyer’s and seller’s lawyers and witnesses.
- Make the payment- now you should make the payment as agreed in the sales agreement. This can be the whole amount or depositing depending on what was agreed.
- Land transfer- the seller will and the buyer should now initiate the transfer request and wait for approval from the commissioner of lands. Once the process of ownership transfer is done, the buyer will receive the land ownership documents and proceed to pay any pending payments.
Also see, Best house plans in Kenya.
It is important to note that the process of acquiring land should always follow a legal process and it is hence important to involve a lawyer/advocate. It is advisable to make partial payments and proceed to make the complete payment once the transfer process is completed.
Other precautions to includes ensuring that the land does not encroach on public property, this can easily be gotten on survey maps which are available from the land’s offices all over the country. Additionally, when making payments for your land, make sure you use the bank since this will make it easy to prove you made the payment in case there is a dispute in the future. Also, do not be in hurry to make the purchase, ensure you do your due diligence and only pay when satisfied.
