It has now become very easy to perform an online land search in Kenya. Gone are the days when one had to travel to land registry offices and queue for a whole day before being able to conduct a land search.
The ministry of lands has been working towards being more efficient and improving its service delivery to Kenyans. As a result of this, all land registers have been registered online. Now Land buyers can perform online land searches from the comfort of their homes at any given day and time.
In the past, the land search process was long and arduous. For example, if you are planning to purchase a piece of land in Nairobi county, one had to follow this process.
Start out by getting the land map from the Land survey office at Ruaraka, after this, they proceed to Ardhi house for a search and then to City hall for planning.
Despite the fact that not all these processes have been digitized, starting out with having the land registry online is a good place to start out from.
This attempt is a good step to doing away with cartels and unscrupulous real estate agents who used to steal land from unsuspecting citizens as a result of the uncoordinated land records.
The process of performing an online land search
- Log into ecitizen. If you have already signed up, select sign in. If not yet click on create an account.
2. Once logged in, select the Ministry of Land, and physical planning. You will be required to set up your KRA pin if you had not already added it during creating your ecitizen account.
3. Select the land search option and input the land title number and complete the subsequent form then submit.
4. Select your best-preferred payment method which could be through MPesa, Credit card or even a debit card.
5. Once your payment is confirmed to be successful, you may proceed to print the results of your online land search. However, even you do not print them you can always access these details upon logging in to ecitizen.
Online land search fees in Kenya cost Kes 500 only.
Moreover, it is important to note that landowners can even register their parcels of land using a USSD code. Below, we will look at how they do this.
How to register your land with a USSD code
- Send an SMS starting with the word land to 21504.
- After subscribing to this service dial *512#. You will receive a prompt asking you if you would like to proceed with the registration
- Select proceed and another prompt appears with various options, select register land
- Input your title number, ID number, Land rent amount as indicated in the certificate as well as your full names.
- Viola! You will be done with registration.
The benefits of registering your land are that if anyone performs a land search on your parcel of land, you will be instantly notified.
