THE outmoded land tenure systems in Zimbabwe are encouraging pseudo-planning and preventing institutions like pension funds from entering the market, an expert has said.
Denford Chatendeuka, a lawyer and property developer, told NewsDay Business on the sidelines of a meeting organised by Zimbabwe Association of Pensions Funds (ZAPF) last week that outdated legislation was not considering the realities on the ground.
“The property owners with vested interests in the real estate assets ought to put more aggression and lobbying for continuous legislative changes that speak to, create and maintain value of their properties,” he said.
“The investors ought to be the drivers of the legislative and tenure reforms rather than policymakers. The deep-seated legal issues include outdated tenure systems, especially with the urban peripheries that have caused pseudo-planning from non-planning authorities and leave out formal player participation like pension funds as they won’t be titled.”
Chatendeuka also said it was important to modernise current legislation like the Regional, Town and Country Planning Act and urban council by-laws.
He said it was critical for property owners like pension funds to get involved in the law-making processes of legislation that influences their property rights.
“Property owners also need to be actively involved in the enforcement part of the legal system. For example, by capacity building the enforcement agents of the local authorities to avoid the current heavy-handed approach of City Parking officers and city traffic enforcement officers,” Chatendeuka he said.
“Commercial awareness should be embraced in the enforcement to avoid the current central business district (CBD) flight of corporate clients as well as enforcement of city cleaning by-laws to maintain the CBD ambience.”
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Chatendeuka said there was also weak enforcement of legislation despite property owners having vested interests in capacitating the local authorities and the Deeds Registry to implement legislative provisions that protect property values.
“There is a need for technical capacitation and training of the custodians of the real estate legislation and enforcement agents through industry bodies such as ZAPF.
“The whole industry value chain ought to complement current efforts by ZAPF in advocacy, financing and capacity building to the real estate legislation value chain,” he said.
