‘Dead in the water’ policies hurting real estate industry

Updated Wednesday, July 17th 2013 at 20:18 GMT +3 From the use of the 1948 British building regulations and apparent inaction on numerous stalled policies, the property market as well as the wider building and construction industry appear to live more in the past than the present, writes MKALA MWAGHESHA
With each election every five years, Kenya gets new office bearers. That is not quite true for the country’s developmental policies. Some policies that Kenya inherited from the colonial government have, with time, been changed to fit Kenya’s current needs.

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Quite a good number have, however, remained the same, with little or no effort being made to change, update or scrap them.
According to a UN-Habitat report on Nairobi released in 2006, lack of policies has led to the stagnation of the slum settlement in terms of improvements and upgrading.
“More than 60 per cent of Nairobi’s population lives in slums. Overall policies and practices to address slum dwellers’ needs have been poorly developed and implemented. As the informal sector keeps expanding, appropriate strategies are in order to enhance its economic growth as well as harness the efforts of various partners and communities, with a view to providing for slum dwellers’ basic needs through coordinated service delivery,” said the report.
Regulations
In the real estate industry, these policies are meant to govern the distribution of land and land-related resources, offer adequate and affordable housing for Kenyans, set rules and regulations to govern the construction industry, and by extension act as reference points for industry players.
“Politics plays a big role in determining the passing, rejection, or the implementation of policies in this industry,” says Waweru Gathecha, chairman of the Architectural Association of Kenya.
“Contest, especially in Parliament where you can rarely get 100 per cent support, is not necessarily bad, but it can slow down progress in coming up with policies as there are always people with self-serving interests,” he notes.
“I would say policies are failing because of the thinking around housing. It is a big sector and there are a lot of factors that come into play that are, sometimes, not considered by the Government’s technocrats,” said Reginald Okumu, a director at Ark Consultants, a Nairobi-based real estate advisory firm.
The former chairman of the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya adds: “The Narc Government passed a housing policy that, to date, has not been implemented. Corruption is also rife as housing requires a lot of funding.”
Many policies in existence are specific to certain aspects of the industry. For instance, the Housing Act is primarily concerned with the National Housing Corporation, a body that was established to play a principal role in the implementation of the Government’s housing programmes.

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