Ndugu the Truth, let me be fair with you and just believe in me the $1.5m houses in Dar are now a common thing! There is an ongoing Bahari Beach Town Development by a private real estate investor, barely off the ground, but already 174 proposed units in one of the 4 adjoining plot have already been fully booked(pre-purchase) and none of these units is less than $220,000; the most expensive is $520,000, and the land lot size is only 320sq.m. In Obay and Masaki you are talking of land lot sizes of over 4,000sq.m and by the way, land values in these areas are anything above $50 per sqm.
True valuers or appraisers/assessors use sales comparison approach in valuing residential properties not just in your USA but also heere in Tz, and we have been astonished at the skyrocketing of property values over the last 3-4 years. A typical swahili house in Kijitonyama fetched hardly Tshs 40m in 2005, today with your Tshs. 100m, you will find it dificult to get a house to buy. I do not thinki this is due to Lukwaza or any EPA money...Tanzania is no longer a producing but a consuming nation, but where do we get the money...maybe laundering...may be too much minerals that are sold our in the illegal market and finally finding its way in real estate! Bongo is Bongo, you can never tell, even the poorest earning person can afford a cell phone, a beer every day and school fees for his kids and will also stay in his own house....mlio nje mlie tu, ni kweli nyumba za bei mbaya zipo mno, hata kama standard hazifikii za huko....ila am not very sure about this. None of the houses in cities like Stockholm, London and Paris can compete against any of the new proeprties being developed and sold in Dar, let us bet...nitawapa mifano kibao
Njilembera,
You have brought up an interesting perspective to this issue. I can tell you from my personal experience (so please don't take it as a general rule), even those Swahili houses are now a target of affluent investors/business people. The investor will normally demolish the existing house and develop a commercial property of some sort to re-coup his or her investment or even develop a more modern residential property. The people who own such houses understand this and they realize the market for such houses. They raise their prices due to high demand of such houses. The residents of Dar are competing for an ever increasingly scarce real estate/land. The population is growing in Dar which makes the situation even worse. But it doesn't have to be this way. There is still vast undeveloped land out there that if people could easily access, will start building. This is where the government should play its part. Develop the necessary infrastructure, make it easier for someone to live in outskirt of Dar to go back and forth into the city. That's how you will alleviate this problem otherwise if you don't do anything about the supply, and just try to regulate the prices or the way the real estate market works you will only make the situation worse.