By Reuben Kimani
Home ownership is the dream of each and every individual, while some prefer purchasing an affordable land for sale within their incomes in satellite towns and building their dream homes gradually, some prefer purchasing an already built house while others consider acquiring an off plan house. Whichever route you choose to use towards your home ownership; ensure you get it right to avoid losing your hard-earned money
Below are 7 things to look out for before investing in off plan houses.
- The company’s background check – take time and establish details about the company before signing any deal. There are several companies purporting to sell off plan houses and have not been delivering on their promises, the first thing you can do is check whether the company is legally registered, how long they have operated, the number of complete projects done and whether they have a pending court case regarding lack of delivery with their past customers. Also, you can go ahead and request to meet the project’s team. This information will help you identify a genuine real estate company in Kenya that you can invest with.
- Conduct an independent research around the area you are interested in investing and compare the prices in the past few years and the projected value in the coming years. This will help you know if the development is overvalued and you can go ahead to look for a better investment opportunity for example purchasing an affordable land for sale in areas such as Ngong, Kangundo Road, Matuu, Konza, Nakuru, Naivasha, Athi River etc and build your house gradually.
- Conduct a thorough due diligence on the specific project– this cuts across whether you are buying land for sale in Kenya or a house for sale in Kenya. As a potential buyer, don’t take chances for a long term investment, rather, take time and individually visit the site to ascertain that indeed it truly exists. Do not rush to invest your hard earned money before you visit and confirm the site’s existence. This is also an opportunity to visit previous projects done and review the quality of work done.
- Take time to confirm if the developer has genuine title deeds to the property. Either its purchasing a vacant land or an off plan house, confirm that indeed they have the genuine title deed of the property. You can go ahead and do a title deed search at the Lands Registry with the assistance of a Lawyer.
- Request to have the approvals given to the developer regarding the specific project by government officials – building of houses requires different approvals from county governments and governments bodies, seek to know if the developer has received the necessary approvals and you can go ahead to ask copies of the document.
- Get to know how often to expect project’s progress updates from the developer and the expected completion timelines – this will help you track the progress within the given timelines. Developers who are not willing to share with you updates of a project are assumed to be hiding crucial information from you as an investor.
- Sign the legal documents with the assistance of a lawyer who will help you in reviewing the underlying terms and conditions and ensure that you are safeguarded from any loss as a result of the transaction you are about to make.
The author is the CEO, Username Investment Limited