Owning a home is a very pressing matter in the Ugandan setting for too many reasons, the foremost being our culture. However, the need to make money is an unquestionable desire, driving many to work for several hours or more than one job. With two equally important needs, one wonders which one takes pre-eminence between buying your first home and buying an investment.
Shem Bageine, a real estate expert, says one can get into an investment that will eventually give them enough capital to build their own house. Alternatively, he says it depends on the individual, such as their needs and desires at that point because they can build the house first then look into investment.
“Ideally, looking at it from a human perspective, you want to be able to have a place you call home. So essentially, the prudent thing would be to ensure that first you are living in your own house before going in for investments. That is because there is the possibility of the investment failing, which would be disaster if you do not have a home yet. Therefore, my recommendation is to first get stable where you are with a house of your own and then look at investment opportunities. You could even use the house as collateral to get a loan facility to invest in other real estate,” he advises.
Moses Lutalo, the managing director of Broll Uganda, says the decision is dependent on whether one has a family or not.
“If you have a family, it is prudent that you first ensure the security of owning a home is catered for. However, if one is single, they lose nothing by investing the money and out of the proceeds pay rent,” he says.
Simon Muhangi, of Fountain Real Estate says an investment is an asset while a home is a liability.
“From bills, maintenance charges, you will simply spend on a home. Conversely, buying an investment gives you a promise of increasing your income and it gets easier to acquire a home because you can get a mortgage and finance it over time with less pressure. Take a scenario of two people earning Shs5m per month then one gets a mortgage of Shs300m while the other gets a loan to invest in another business. After a given period, the one who got a loan will have more income on their account while the other one will be servicing the mortgage and maintaining the house, thus more expenses,” he shares.
However, there are also people that opt to build with the idea of taking up residency in one unit while renting out the others. Bageine says …….