News / National
90% of urban properties in Zimbabwe untitled
25 Sep 2015 at 16:47hrs | Views
About 90% of houses in Zimbabwe do not have title deeds as 23 of the country's 32 major towns are situated on State land and therefore the respective local authorities cannot claim ownership of the properties.
Zimbabwe is currently in sixes and sevens over the issue of property rights after the country's 2000 land reform programme placed all listed farmlands in the country under the State.
This means that most people are missing out on trade in key markets such as the secondary mortgage market, which can provide new sources of capital by grouping loans from the primary mortgage market, where title deeds are securitised as mortgage-based securities.
Zimbabwe Property Owners Trust (ZIPOT) chief executive officer, Paul Mangwana, said it was worrying that many people were living in houses which were fundamentally not theirs because they did not possess title deeds of the properties.
"The most critical right is the right to property. People invested huge amounts building expensive houses on huge tracts of land, but they can't use those properties to borrow from banks to expand into business and other venture because they have no title deeds to those properties. How can you buy a piece of land and not have title to it? It does not make sense. When a property is not title surveyed, it does not exist at law and then you go and build a mansion on a piece of land that does not exist," said Mangwana.
"People have the misconception that getting title deeds is expensive, but it is not. The country should not even be struggling to get development finance because when a country is looking for development finance it can use a collection of its primary mortgages as secondary mortgage to borrow international finance. And Zimbabwe is denying itself that opportunity because it's not allowing the use of development of the secondary mortgage market. We don't even have a secondary mortgage market," Mangwana noted.
Zimbabwe is currently in sixes and sevens over the issue of property rights after the country's 2000 land reform programme placed all listed farmlands in the country under the State.
This means that most people are missing out on trade in key markets such as the secondary mortgage market, which can provide new sources of capital by grouping loans from the primary mortgage market, where title deeds are securitised as mortgage-based securities.
"The most critical right is the right to property. People invested huge amounts building expensive houses on huge tracts of land, but they can't use those properties to borrow from banks to expand into business and other venture because they have no title deeds to those properties. How can you buy a piece of land and not have title to it? It does not make sense. When a property is not title surveyed, it does not exist at law and then you go and build a mansion on a piece of land that does not exist," said Mangwana.
"People have the misconception that getting title deeds is expensive, but it is not. The country should not even be struggling to get development finance because when a country is looking for development finance it can use a collection of its primary mortgages as secondary mortgage to borrow international finance. And Zimbabwe is denying itself that opportunity because it's not allowing the use of development of the secondary mortgage market. We don't even have a secondary mortgage market," Mangwana noted.
Source - Financial Gazette
