Before you part with your hard earned cash to buy a property, there are a number of things you should know. Apart from knowing how to choose the right property, the best neighbourhood for you and being able to lay out all the extra costs that come with a purchase of property. You also need to know the procedure to follow, where to enquire about certain pertinent issues and what documentation to ask for or to sign.
If you are an avid reader of our article you are now well versed with the initial stages of preparing to buy property. The procedure of buying your house may vary from one property agent, and from one seller to another. Buying property starts with you making an enquiry about the availability of the property of choice. If the property is still available for sale, you view the property to ascertain the specifications and or description given by the seller. Be careful to assess the value of the property for reasons of making a reasonable offer. Talk to the neighbours; remember sellers tend to overprice their property. Be sure to bargain you might end up saving a few million shillings. Of course your savings depend highly on the property vendor and your bargaining power.
After establishing a reasonable value; write to the property agent with your offer. At this stage the agent will involve the owner in negotiating and then the agent will prepare an offer letter on behalf of the owner. With the offer letter always ensure you get a copy of the title, a copy of the deed plan and or other ownership documents. If the offer price, the terms and conditions and the mode of payment are agreeable to you, do a property search with the lands office to ascertain ownership of the property and other important matters such as land rates, lease expiry etc.
Now sign the offer letter and return to the property agent. Remember to include your lawyer’s details. The property agent will then forward the signed offer letter to the owner’s lawyer. The owner’s lawyer then prepares a sale agreement and sends it to your lawyer. It’s your lawyers obligation to go through the sale agreement for contentious issues, and to carry out an independent due diligence to ascertain true ownership of the property and the authenticity of documents.
After any contentious issues have been resolved amicably and the lawyers have agreed to your satisfaction; you can now start payment as outlined in the offer letter and sale agreement. Depending on the seller you may pay directly to them, or through their lawyer you may also want to pay through the property agent depending on your business relationship with the agent. Payments are usually outlined in the sale agreement such that you pay a down payment of either 10% ten percent or 50% fifty percent of the sale price. The ownership documents are then transferred to you within thirty or ninety days as agreed before you can settle the balance. At the end of this process you are now a new property owner. Make copies of all your ownership documents and keep the originals as safely as you can.
