You can start a business without money – Tushabe

Herbert Tushabe is the managing director Amity Realtors Ltd, one of the leading real estate companies in southwestern Uganda. He started this company in 2020 without any money or land but through a Facebook page where he acted as a middle man. His company now boasts of having sold more than 100,000 plots of land, 100 estates and with a clientele base of more than 800 individuals and companies in southwestern region.
Give us a brief of your business journey.

My journey in real estate started in 2020. I had started a community school in Mbarara City but then the Covid-19 lockdown started. I had no savings and had a family to take care of and other responsibilities. Along the way, I thought of what I could do to make ends meet and that is when an idea of joining the real estate sector came to my mind. However, I had no money or land and as I figured out how to start, I remembered I had an Information Communication and Technology (ICT) background.

I started benchmarking from real estate companies to get to know how they were doing it. I interacted with some of the players and some were kind to take me through the key basics of running the real estate business. In December 2020 I started a Facebook page and convinced some real estate dealers to give me listings of their land and market them on my page. Some agreed and I got overwhelming inquiries and they started giving me commission. The first time I listed land markets on my page I got 20 inquiries. 

Besides Facebook, I boosted my reach using WhatsApp and telephone contacts.

When was your breakthrough?

When I realised that I was being cheated by real estate dealers whom I was advertising for. The commission was very little, so in 2021 I partnered with a friend and we started Amity Realtors Ltd.

It start was not easy. We started with Shs5m that I had saved from my commissions. Our first project was 50 by 100 plot that we bought in January 2021 at Shs5m and we sold it in two days at Shs20m. We used this money to buy our first estate in Kakiika, Mbarara City North. But also in real estate we understood that public trust was key, so we also leveraged on this to succeed because people would give us their land on credit, we sell it and pay them later.

There were already other players in the sector, so I thought we had to be innovative and do things differently to penetrate this market. I realised that in Mbarara and the whole of southwestern region, the real estate business was hot but lacked formalisation and professionalism. People were doing businesses on the street, in corridors on pieces of paper and I said no, to penetrate this business we have to do things in a professional way.

What are some of the challenges that you meet in this business?

The start was not easy, first we had no money but also we met resistance from the people who were already in business who claimed we were trying to push them out of business by doing things in a professional way.

When we opened an office, a website and started doing our business in a digital way, the other players got jealous but we explained to them that we are trying to do real estate business in an organised manner. A person cannot come with Shs30m and wants land but you do not have an office or address. They later saw sense when they realised that despite being new in the market our client base was growing.

What has kept you moving?

God was on our side but also public trust. We have positioned ourselves as a trusted real estate company, we committed to remain transparent from the word go, to do things openly. Because of this, people believe in us, imagine someone gives you his farm without paying any coin, you sell and pay him back later.

Competition in this sector has also forced us to be very innovative, for example coming up with flexible land acquisition like installment payments.

FUTURE PLANS

We plan to partner with the government and other nongovernmental organisations to provide affordable housing, especially to the urban poor.