Find a house using the Real Estate Database

The database was established to combine properties that were fragmented on websites, writes Flavia Nalubega

Alex Kawooya, a resident of Nakulabye says searching for a house for rent had become a night mare. “I went out on a house search for a rental home. I was with a broker who took me to different places around town for over two weeks, but I didn’t find a house of my choice,” he says.

He adds that the brokers would lie to him about the size, location and facilities of a house only to find the opposite of what he asked for. Mr Kawooya is not the only person who can’t find a good house, land or real estate property of their choice after a long struggle.

Property market
With the establishment of the Real Estate Database (RED), searching for real estate property has been eased. It has a list of furnished and unfurnished houses or residential and commercial properties of different types for sale or rent. They include; bungalows, semi-detached apartments, mansions and shell houses.

They also have cottages, condominiums and office space, all which can easily be searched for and found on RED with the different registered dealers. All you need is to know how to use the search engine.

According to Mr Julius Caesar Ssebaale, one of the brains behind RED, he says the database contains real estate information. “Real Estate Database is a property search engine whose aim is to interlink all real estate websites in Uganda so as to create a pool of thousands of properties on one website,” he says.

RED is owned by Zillion Technologies Ltd, a company that specialises in Web based technologies. The aim of putting up such a database is to ensure that consumers find real estate property with ease while Real Estate Dealers use it as a platform of advertising.

“As a company, we have over the last four years created several real estate websites; we then realised that it was actually possible to link all our stock real estate websites and other websites in order to create one collection of properties so that clients can find all the properties they need in one pool,” Mr Ssebaale says. He adds that clients can find the same properties on the websites of the respective property agents.

The benefits
RED provides web-based application services. When they get a client or agent, they develop a personal website for the customer and ensure that the client is incorporated onto the database by uploading all the details about that particular company onto this database.

“We provide a service known as Multiple Listing Service (MLS); such a service is popular in the USA, Canada, UK and here in Uganda. We decided to call it the Real Estate Database because it was easier for our real estate clients to understand,” he says.

The members so far on this database include AN Consult Ltd, Akright Properties, and Jomayi Property Consultants, among others. Many say they have benefited from the programme.

Mr Enos Kanyesigye, the marketing executive of AN Consults Ltd, says that RED has helped boost their business for the last two years. “The database has given us exposure and inquries from potential clients have increased. This is because we describe our property online including attaching pictures of the exterior and interior of the property we deal in besides other information like the size of the property and acreage,” he explains.

Membership fee
Agents and brokers of RED pay only an annual membership fee of Shs600,000 while developers pay Shs2.4m per year. Developers basically refer to agents who are just getting established from the initial stages and this fee includes establishment of a full dynamic website if the client does not have one.

Mr Ssebaale however says these costs are affordable and fair compared to the services offered basing on the fact that all the websites linked to the RED have advanced real estate features which enable a potential client to easily find the property he needs in only three clicks.

The database indicates property in Kampala Uganda, Nairobi Kenya, Dar Salam Tanzania and Kigali Rwanda thus giving the client a wide range of choice. In Uganda, real estate property provided is in over 50 different places in all the four regions. Log on to www.RealEstateDatabase.info, and search for a house of your choice.