Adoption of agricultural land valuation practices among land owners in Kapchorwa district.

Abstract

Increased fluctuations in land prices in Uganda are attributable to limited access to land and property information. Additionally other factors such as quality of land, land productivity, land fragmentation and restrictions on land use and purchase lead to fluctuations of land prices. Fluctuation in land prices has been accelerated by dominance of middle men also known as agents in land transactions. As a consequence, land owners suffer losses. These losses could be attributable to lack of information about existence of professional valuation services for assets like land. To solve this problem, the study sought to determine the spatial distribution of registered land; assess effect of socio-economic characteristics of land owners on the adoption of land valuation and relationship between land tenure system and adoption of land valuation in Kapchorwa District. The objectives were achieved through questionnaire survey which involved picking location coordinates of the registered land using a Garmin type of GPS. In addition, demographics and household characteristics (such as income levels, education level, gender, distance of valued land from Kapchorwa town council among others) that were sought to influence professional valuations services were captured in the questionnaire survey. Registered land owners were identified with the help of Kapchorwa District Land Board and Local Council officials. All the registered land owners were surveyed because they were only 41 in total. The GPS data of registered land were used to generate a map showing the distribution of registered land using ArcGIS version 10.6.1 while the other household characteristics were analyzed using SPSS version 16. It was found that 68.29% of registered lands were situated within the town council. Twenty-two percent of registered land owners had valued land, and 66.7% of those who had valued land had their annual income above UGX. 1,000,000. Furthermore, 77.8% of those who had valued land had attended university/ tertiary institution. All those who had valued their land were male and owned land under freehold tenure system. There was generally low awareness of profession valuation services especially among women and land owners far away from Kapchorwa town council. The study recommended intensification of awareness on the advantages of professional valuation services among registered land owners in Kapchorwa District.