How to Do a Land Search in Kenya, and How to Read the Results

Somewhere in Kenya today, somebody is going to pay a deposit on land they have never searched. Some of them will be fine. A few of them will lose everything they have saved.

A search costs about KSh 500. It is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy, and the strange thing is how many buyers skip it, usually because they do not know how simple it is, or because the seller is in a hurry and the hurry is contagious.

This is how it works.

What a land search actually tells you

An official search is the registry telling you, on paper and under its own stamp, four things:

• Who the registered owner is: the name on the records right now, today.
• What the parcel is: its number, its size, and whether it is freehold or leasehold.
• What is attached to it: any charge (a bank loan), caveat, caution, lease or court order sitting on the land.
• Nothing else. This is important. A search does not tell you that the beacons are where the seller says they are, and it does not tell you that the parcel on the ground is the parcel on the paper.

That last point is where honest buyers still get hurt. The search is necessary. It is not sufficient.

What you need before you start

1. A copy of the title deed, or at minimum the parcel number. A seller who will not give you the parcel number has told you something already.
2. A copy of your ID.
3. Your KRA PIN certificate.
4. The search application form: you get it at the registry, or you fill it online.
5. The fee, around KSh 500.

Option one: online, through Ardhisasa

The government's land platform is ardhisasa.lands.go.ke. You register with your ID and KRA PIN, verify your details, and you can apply for an official search on a parcel that has been migrated onto the system.

The honest caveat: migration is not finished. Nairobi is largely on it. Other counties are coming on progressively, and parcels in parts of Kiambu and Machakos may still need the physical registry. Check for your parcel first rather than assuming.

Option two: at the lands registry

For most land along Thika Road, this is still the route. The parcel determines the registry: Kiambu parcels go to the Kiambu registry, Machakos parcels to Machakos, and so on.

You fill the search application form, attach the copy of the title and your ID, pay the fee, and get a receipt. Keep the receipt. You collect the result after a few days.

Reading the result, line by line

The search comes back as a single page. Here is what each part means.

Registered proprietor

The owner. Compare this name, letter for letter, with the ID of the person selling to you. If the names do not match exactly, stop and ask why. There are legitimate answers (a married name, an estate, a company) but every one of them requires extra documents, and the time to find that out is now.

If the registered owner has died, you are not buying from the family. You are buying from an estate, and the estate needs a grant of letters of administration and a confirmed grant before anybody can transfer anything. No confirmed grant, no sale.

Acreage / size

Check it against what you are being shown. If the title says 0.045 hectares and the seller is walking you around something that feels like half an acre, one of the two is wrong.

Tenure

Freehold or leasehold. If leasehold, note the term and when it started: a 99-year lease with 12 years left is a very different asset from the same plot with 80 years left. We go into this properly in freehold or leasehold.

Encumbrances

This is the section people skim, and it is the one that matters most.

• Charge: the land is security for a loan. It can still be sold, but the lender has to discharge the charge first. Make that a written condition of your agreement.
• Caveat or caution: somebody has formally told the registry they have an interest in this land. A spouse. A buyer from a previous deal that went bad. Find out who and why before you go further.
• Court order: the land is in a dispute. Walk away. There is other land.
• Nil: clean. This is what you want to see.

The four checks a search will not do for you

Do these as well. Every one of them has saved somebody money.

1. Walk the beacons

Ask the seller to show you the boundary beacons, and walk all four. If beacons are missing, a licensed surveyor can re-establish them against the registry index map. Do not accept "the beacon is around there somewhere".

2. Get the registry index map or the mutation

This shows you the shape and position of the parcel relative to its neighbours and to the road. It is how you find out that the "tarmac access" is actually across somebody else's land.

3. Land Control Board consent, if the land is agricultural

Most land in Kiambu and Machakos outside the towns is still classified agricultural, and transferring it needs consent from the Land Control Board. The board sits on fixed dates. Build it into your timeline rather than discovering it at the end.

4. Rates and rent clearance

Ask the county for a rates clearance certificate. Unpaid rates follow the land, not the person who ran them up.

Then, and only then, the money

• Pay through an advocate's client account. Not personal M-Pesa. Not a till number. Not "my brother's account because mine has a problem".
• Get a written sale agreement, signed, with the parcel number, the price, the payment dates and what happens if either side pulls out.
• Stamp duty is yours to pay, currently 4% of the value in urban areas and 2% in rural areas. Budget for it from the start; it surprises people.
• Keep every receipt. All of them.

How we do it at Kareithi Properties

We will give you the parcel number before you ask for it. We expect you to search. On most of our plots we have done the search ourselves and will show you the result, and we are happy to go to the registry with you so you can get your own.

A seller who is uncomfortable with you searching the land is telling you everything you need to know. Any plot on this site, you can check.

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