Kenya's Title Deed Issuance Records First Annual Fall in Five Years
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Title deed issuance fell 35.3 per cent to 282,392 in the year to June 2026, the first annual decline in five years, as land transactions slowed and bank lending to real estate contracted.
Kenya's land market recorded its first annual fall in title deed issuance in five years, signalling a slowdown in property transactions as bank lending to the sector shrank and house prices came under pressure. Land ownership documents issued by the State Department for Lands and Physical Planning contracted 35.3 per cent to 282,392 title deeds in the year to June 2026, from 436,212 a year earlier.
The drop, detailed in a budgetary report by the State department to the National Treasury, reversed four consecutive years of growth. The department issued 422,313 titles in the year to June 2024 and 436,212 in the 2024/25 financial year, the highest annual tally in decades according to publicly available data.
The decline also left a shortfall of 137,608 title deeds, because the government had planned to process 420,000 documents in the last financial year. That means the State achieved 67.2 per cent of its target. The Lands department attributed the underperformance to fewer land transactions, writing in its Medium-Term Expenditure Framework report that the "underachievement in FY2025/26 is due to low land transaction".
Title deeds are the proof of land ownership used when selling property, developing land or putting it up as security for a bank loan, making issuance volumes a bellwether for the pace of land purchases and property investment.
Central Bank of Kenya data shows net domestic credit to real estate fell by Sh6.1 billion to Sh445.9 billion in the year to June 2026, from Sh452 billion a year earlier. The 1.35 per cent contraction in net lending coincided with the slump in title issuance, providing a second indicator of weakening momentum in the property market, although the figures do not show how many transactions were delayed.
Real estate credit covers financing for construction companies, builders and developers to acquire land and build residential estates, commercial complexes and industrial parks, as well as household loans to buy homes or land and borrowing secured against existing property. The contraction in the year to June marked a reversal after years of expansion in the stock of bank credit to the sector, whose growth had slowed considerably before turning negative in the latest financial year.