Title after the Land Registration Act

Every decade produces a new vocabulary for Kenyan land. Freehold. Leasehold. Sectional. Community. The words change; the error does not. People assume that because a title has been issued, the history beneath it has been settled, and that because Ardhisasa is online, the registry is finished with them.

It is not. A parcel in Nairobi, a coastal lease, and an agricultural holding in the former settler counties will each fail in a different way: a missing deed plan, a caution that was never withdrawn, a sectional plan that does not match the building, a National Land Commission historical-injustice claim that arrives after completion.

The work is to make the register, the ground, and the money agree — before the charge is registered, not after the facility is drawn. When they cannot be made to agree, the work is to say so in time for the client to walk away.

We are not land agents. We do not sell plots. We are advocates to the architecture of title, and, when the architecture fails, to the people who have to live in the wreckage. The two mandates are not in conflict if they are undertaken in the right order.