Real estate players are cautiously watching proposed review of mailo land system
Real estate dealers are cautiously watching the proposed review of the Mailo land system as they try to predict how it will affect business.
Jamil Migadde, the systems administrator of Ssema properties, a local real estate company expressed concern as abolition or review is bound to affect the business because it cannot remain the same because there has to be a reason for which the review is being undertaken.
Migadde says they have been operating the property business basing heavily on the mailo land system and those who will not cope with the coming changes will have to close down. He adds that abolition of the system will leave some operators operating in loses.
Ssalongo Luwalagga Munzi, the chairperson to the secretariat in Ngeye clan, one of the clans in Buganda, says review of the mailo system would affect their income at a clan level as now land would be out of their custody.
The real estate market in Uganda is among the seemingly flourishing ventures in Uganda’s economy with demand and investor confidence rising.
The total amount of mortgages outstanding rose by 11% and stood at1.34 trillion Shillings (US$362.33 million) in September 2019 year on year, according to the Bank of Uganda. Likewise, credit advanced to the real estate sector as a whole, comprising of building, mortgage and construction, increased 12.8% to UGX 3.19 trillion (US$860.9 million) year on year over the same period.
Government proposes changes in the land tenure system especially in the Mailo system, which the president has described as evil.
The Mailo system got its name from the 1900 Buganda agreement when the colonial government subdivided the 19,600 square miles of Buganda land amongst different ownership groups with each measured in the square miles.
This created double ownership of a given piece of land due to the creation of new sets of tenants and the mailo land owner.
