By Ronnie Mayanja | www.unaatimes.com | The Real Estate Market as I saw it | Last December I was quite impressed to witness first hand the booming real estate market in Uganda. What was perhaps was
more surprising was the prices many of the realtors and property moguls were charging for some of these palatial homes.
Today a plot of land in an affluent suburb of Kampala like Kololo and Nakasero could easily run you close to a million dollars. This is how lucrative the housing and land sector has become in today’s Uganda. The one thing that is definitely worth noting is the choice of properties that have now mashroomed in Kampala. This has offered the buyers a chance to make informed decisions when buying if the brokers don’t get to you first.
As a land owner in Nansana, Mpererwe and Masaka, I remember getting accosted by one of these dealers who wanted me to sell after learning that I had gone to inspect some land I owned on my recent trip. I was literally suffocated by calls on a daily basis by brokers inquiring what price I was selling even though I had not listed any land or properties for sale.
Kampala’s booming economy has also led to population growth that has in turn resulted in the booming housing sector.
Today Uganda has companies like Property consultants, Jomayi, Akright, Knight Frank, Kensington Homes, Pearl Estates and National Housing, all competing to satisfy this growing industry. With availability of mortgage financing from the major banks this has meant that Ugandans can now build and own palatial homes they only dreamt about years ago.
In some cases while visiting and touring some of these properties I couldn’t help but ask myself if many of these units up for sale are not over priced or inflated simply because there is alot of money to go around in Uganda these days.
My brief research let me believe that a number of factors determine the price of the land in Uganda. Land that is on hill top will cost you more partly because it commands a better view compared to the low lying areas. Areas near Lake Victoria shore lines will generally be priced highly partly due to the sandy beaches. The Islands in Lake Victoria have also become gems whose prices have more than doubled in the recent past.
As you drive closer to the capital the prices tend to appreciate as that of areas along the major highways like the newly constructed Northern By- Pass, Entebbe and Jinja Road Highways.
The real beneficiaries in the this haggling process have definitely been the real estate dealers or call them speculators, attorneys and surveyors who have been at the center of these land transactions. One could perhaps add the officials at the Uganda Land Commission who have to authenticate these land purchases.
Real Estate has now become such a lucrative commodity in Uganda that some companies have now invested millions partly because they are experiencing a good return to their investment over considerably shorter periods of time. This growth and thirst for real estate has been fueled in part by Uganda’s diaspora communities looking to return back home and Uganda’s emerging middle class composed of young professionals with the a good disposable income to afford these new properties.
For those who have not travelled home in years, be prepared for a major change as you drive down Kampala’s streets. Not only have the hotels and the shopping malls changed and got a new face lift, the entire skyline has now been transformed with new sky scrapers, shopping arcades and new housings estates in gated communities.
Whether or not the sky rocketing prices are sustainable will be a story for another day. Some have also added that this could be a bubble similar to that witnessed in the US real estate market years ago that could burst at any time. The difference if you were to ask me is that Uganda is largely a cash and not credit economy that could perhaps be the engine driving Uganda’s real estate industry today.
Ronnie Mayanja
Editor-UNAA Times Online
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Thanks for the article and pictures. I wish you had identified the buildings in the pictures; otherwise there is a sense of icompletion everytime you have pictures without any captions under the picture.
Thanks for a good job anyways.
I read in the papers that most ugandan live on $2 dollars a day,who buys these good houses and apartments which costs between $1500 to $2000 a month,is it fiction,or just massive corruption on a bigger scale
just wondering,which is the truth?
@ HUSSIEN: the $2 dollar thing could be true but also those houses and apartments also exist and people buy them but of which 80% are international and the rest percentage for ugandans, well i assume u know that Uganda is one of the african countries gifted by nature so any international would give anything to own a property thea. Am a real Estate Agent and thats y i know this!
Nice article, also note high speculation has driven the prices of these properties very high beyond their actual worth…. Their prices have not been as result of demand as you might have noted many of them are actually empty.
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