Government To Regulate Real Estate Dealers
The Minister of Lands, Housing, and Urban Development, Judith Nabakooba recently revealed that the proposed law to regulate the fast-growing real estate sector will offer incentives to dealers.
A planned law to control the rapidly expanding real estate industry will provide incentives to dealers, according to Judith Nabakooba, Minister of Lands, Housing, and Urban Development.
“We are making good progress in providing the real estate sector with a proper legal framework that will enable it to achieve its investment goals,” she told real estate dealers in a meeting last month.
“This includes offering incentives to the private sector in your quest to recoup your investments.” In October 2023, it emerged that Cabinet had approved the principles of the Bill titled “The Real Estate Bill,” which seeks to provide direction on how stakeholders in the housing industry will operate, enabling the government to influence their operations.
Currently, the town and county planning boards, which are statutory bodies of the physical planning unit, regulate real estate. They are only in charge of approving residential house construction plans, not site plans.
“It governs the industry, who runs it, and its parameters. What we want is to make it more sustainable for the population, but also for the government, because right now, real estate is not regulated,” Nabakooba said.
The minister stated that after the Bill’s principles were approved, they began consultations and benchmarking in a few countries under the direction of Cabinet. “Upon the Cabinet’s directive, we sent a team to South Africa, India, and Kenya to benchmark,” she said, adding that the team returned the draft bill to the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs.
She stated that once the Bill returns to the ministry, she will take it back to Cabinet for further discussion, and if they are satisfied with their consultations, they will proceed to table it in Parliament.
She noted that the housing sector contributes 12% to Uganda’s gross domestic product and pledged on behalf of the Government to continue supporting it. She also noted that the Government has put in place different policies and laws to provide tenuous security for everyone, with the hope that the private sector will be the lead in creative housing solutions.
The two policies are the National Housing Policy, which provides a framework for housing development in Uganda, and the National Urban Policy, which provides a framework for managing the country’s urbanization process.
Others include the Condominium Property Act, which provides for vertical housing development, especially in urban areas, to help contain urban sprawl; the Physical Planning Act; the Energy Efficiency Guidelines in buildings; and the establishment of 23 Ministerial Zonal Offices, among others.
Nabakooba urged real estate developers to embrace the latest technologies on the international market as a way of boosting the country’s construction sector. She also said that with continued support, her ministry is looking at bridging the gap of a 2.1 million house housing deficit.
