Assessing the impact of an informal land market on the land transactions in Sheema municipality

Abstract

An informal land market is a market that operates outside the formal public or state mechanism of land delivery, registration, control and planning regulations. In other-wards land transactions in such a market are neither recognised by the state law nor registered in the government systems. Therefore this research paper assesses the impact of an informal land market on land transactions in Sheema Municipality in the which the study area was limited to two divisions that is Kabwohe division and Sheema central out of the four divisions located in Sheema municipality, a onetime research was conducted following a mixed research design that involved both qualitative and quantitative techniques of data collection which were questionnaires availed to the local council chairperson, in-depth interview guides to the key informants( lands officer, physical, planner, health inspector, real estate agents, brokers). The sample size of 32respondents was obtained through simple random sampling to get the respondents from the two division, purposive sampling basing on the researchers knowledge, the key informants were selected. The research findings obtained were arranged using Google forms and data analysis obtained through the use of Microsoft excel, SPSS software for descriptive presentation and testing the validity of the content using the content validity index (I). Due to the ability to analyse the research findings, the researcher was able to identify the gaps in the operation of an informal land market of which some of them include inadequate land information since most of the information concerning land sales is substantially provided by the local land brokers, presence tenure insecurity in which sales agreements are commonly used which do not provide clear evidence to land ownership and demarcation.