Private practitioners have good news for Kenyans, especially those who are planning to own new property. This is following the recent reports from the private practitioners that were allowed to value the property deals in place of the land ministry. Their reports have it that the mean time required to complete the process of registering and transferring land and buildings is expected to fall by more than half.

ISK, the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya has it that the new regulations will open doors to over 500 registered valuers to exercise the property deals. This will be significant as the number of government valuers will see an increase from less than 60 that were handling 57 registries.

Recently, the Stamp Duty Regulations 2020, Treasury cabinet secretary Ukur Yatani was said to have gazetted, asking for property buyers to be given the option to either use civil servants or hire approved valuers to process the land transfers for stamp duty.

In Kenya, Valuation attracts a fee of about 0.25% of the property value.

During an interview with the Daily Nation, ISK President Abraham Samoei said “A valuation now will take one or two days because if a valuer is engaged, you go to the next one,”.

“Valuation is just one component (of property registration), but once we now have eased valuation… we can come down to less than a week from up to 90 days we have been accustomed to,” he added.

The awaited drop in the turnaround period for land transfer could be the key to lifting the low Kenyan international ranking in relation to processing property deals. Right now Kenya is ranked as number 134 of the 109 countries.

In a report by the World Bank Group’s Doing Business Index 2020, Kenya was said to be among the most laborious in registering properties. Taking an average of 43.5 days in 10 procedures, contrary to the average of 9 steps in sub-Saharan Africa.