Acquiring a house in Dar nowadays is a big challenge

MOST Dar city residents living from all corners of its suburbs, are faced with a great challenge of acquiring land on which to build permanent houses of their own. Among the most challenges faced are the availability of plots which are located in far flung areas from the city coupled with the high sale of cement products, their prices is too expensive. This is the biggest problem which forces few others who owns a piece of land to remain land speculators. The areas which are now designated for new plots are in Chanika, Pugu Kajiungeni and Kigogo Fresh, along Kisarawe road, Vikindu and Kisemvule along Kilwa road, and Bunju along Bagamoyo Road. The three roads are the major outlets that links the city of Dar es Salaam. Other challenges posed are on the means of transport which becomes very expensive for an ordinary worker to afford the transport fare of going and return an aspect that forces those who do not have own transport, to connect three daladalas in order to get to their working places. But still the consumption of fuel is another compelling challenge to those with personal vehicles plying in between the area. P rices of most plots in the designated areas which are suitable for the construction of residential buildings are rising even unsurveyed plots are being sold at high prices as the demand is hitting the roof. In newly developed areas such as those of Majohe, Nyantira and Bomba-Mbili in Ilala municipality, a hectare of land is currently sold at between Tsh. 3.5 million and Tsh. 4 million. This is a tremendous increase says Matiko Megwe a long lived resident of Majohe newly established estate. Mr. Megwe bought his plot twenty years ago at a total cash price of Tshs.200,000/-, and stayed for the next ten years without developing his plot as the area was still too bushy, only few people had inhabited it.
According to him, the same piece of an hectare of land has now increased by over 25 times the amount of money he initially paid to a local village man living in the area. Without knowing the development of human settlements, ignorance is one aspect that drives most people into misunderstanding about their future life.

A congested human settlement at Magomeni in Dar es Salaam city. High costs of plots and cement products in the country, are the cause of poor development of new human settlements on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam city.

According to an expert in human settlement, land prices in most areas have been rising because population is increasing rapidly pushing up the demand for homes. A government program to formalize the informal sector including surveying land and issuing title deeds to owners in Dar es Salaam suburbs has made the land more valuable because the surveyed plots can be used as collaterals to borrow money from the banks. A government village chairman for Bomba-mbili village in Chanika ward, Mr. Said Bakiriu says that land will soon become scarce and around his area as many people are pushing to buy it. According to the Ministry of Lands and Human Settlements, the government had started surveying land in unsurveyed residences in all suburbs within the city of Dar es Salaam and provided title deeds to their owners including other big towns and cities in the country. For Dar es Salaam city alone, statistics shows that up to December 2008, about 410,000 land owners living in unplanned areas were identified. Around three quarters of the population within the city are squatters.
However, about 50,000 home owners have been registered and given title deeds. Since 2002 when the exercise started, the Ministry of Lands and Human Settlements has surveyed more than 20,000 plots in Dar es Salaam. Coupled with the rapid changes of the newly built structures coming up in a more magnificent scale in the city of Dar es Salaam, with the escalating commercial and residential flats, the sector has shown a tremendous boom. Among the major key players in the on-going real estate boom in the city and even in up-country regions is turning out to be none other than the Tanzania Building Agency (TBA).

Masaki residential apartments constructed by TBA:

The agency, since its establishment in 2002 has shown a tremendous development in real estate sector in both commercial and residential buildings with the aim of providing and improving accommodation to the public servants and the government through efficient and effective real estate consultancy and business services. Unlike before, presumably for the last two decades when the industry was still in its infancy stage, the boom is as a result of the currently liberalized national economy. It’s for this reason that TBA which operates under the Ministry of Infrastructure Development sought to provide quality and affordable accommodation to the government and public servants through efficient and effective Real Estate consultancy and business services. While continuing to provide a wide range of low-cost developing housing schemes for the government workers in the country, TBA has within a short period of its existence made a conscious effort to venture into various other areas of investment in the name of diversification. According to the Agency’s Chief Executive Architect Makumba Kimweri, the purpose is to expand and diversify the fund’s investment portfolio as a way of expanding its profit base for the ultimate benefit of the people. In what the TBA is offering in terms of residential housing, the vivid examples of the agency’s housing development projects of a low-cost housing for public servants in all regions of mainland Tanzania.
Over 100 low-cost housing units have been constructed and described as the biggest of its kind so far undertaken. The houses have been made available to government servants and the general public through either outright purchase or hire purchase. The TBA is a progressive national agency in Tanzania with a vision of being the leading real estate institution that aims at providing a wide range of low cost and high cost housing development schemes to all government staff in the country.