Updated October 2026. Reflects Nairobi City County’s 2027 land rates Gazette Notice dated September 4, 2026, and the countywide crackdown on land rates defaulters that has been running since July 2026.
Nairobi County has started freezing bank accounts and sending licensed auctioneers after property owners who have not paid their land rates, and a new Gazette Notice dated September 4, 2026 has now locked in the rates that will apply from January 2027. If you own land or a building anywhere in the city, this is a good week to find out whether you have land rates arrears in Kenya sitting against your property, because the county has made it clear it is done waiting for stragglers to catch up on their own.
Governor Johnson Sakaja’s administration says Nairobi has roughly 250,000 registered land parcels, and only about 50,000 of those owners pay their land rates consistently. That gap is why the county appointed private debt collection firms and licensed auctioneers to chase an estimated Ksh 50 billion in unpaid rates, penalties and interest, with wealthy estates such as Runda, Kileleshwa and Kilimani named among the areas carrying the heaviest concentration of defaulters.
This guide walks through what land rates actually are, how the new 2027 figures were set, how to find out what you personally owe, what waivers have been offered and what that means for you now, and what genuinely happens if a demand notice gets ignored. It focuses on Nairobi, since land rates are set and collected by each county on its own schedule, but the underlying pattern, a charge that quietly builds into arrears until a county decides to enforce, plays out in similar form almost everywhere in Kenya.
Quick tip: Do not wait for a letter in the post. Nairobi County has been sending SMS warnings and using field officers to physically mark non-compliant buildings, so the fastest way to find out exactly where you stand is to request a statement of account from the county revenue office or through the county’s own ePayments portal. Land rates are a county matter, not something you check through Ardhisasa, which handles land registration and title records rather than county tax accounts.
Why Nairobi has suddenly gotten serious about land rates arrears
When Sakaja took office in August 2022, Nairobi County was carrying pending bills of roughly Ksh 118 billion, including about Ksh 16 billion inherited from the defunct Nairobi Metropolitan Services. By mid 2025 that figure had been brought down to around Ksh 86.77 billion through reconciliation and settlements, but a wage bill that consumes a large share of county revenue and billions tied up in legal fees and pension arrears to former Nairobi City Council staff have kept pressure on the county’s finances.
Land rates are one of the few revenue lines Nairobi can grow without a new tax, simply by collecting what residents already owe under existing law. County officials have pointed out that land rates make up roughly a quarter of Nairobi’s annual revenue, and that full compliance across all 250,000 registered parcels could lift collections into the Ksh 30 to 63 billion range each year. That is the arithmetic driving this crackdown: it is cheaper and faster for the county to chase existing arrears than to invent a new charge.
None of this is unique to Nairobi. Every county in Kenya runs its own land rates regime, and most face similar pressure to collect what is owed rather than raise new levies. Nairobi is simply the county furthest along in turning that pressure into visible enforcement, which is exactly why its 2027 rates and its defaulter crackdown are worth understanding even if you do not live in the city.
What land rates actually are, and who has to pay them
Land rates are an annual charge that a county government levies on land within its boundaries, under the National Rating Act, 2024 and each county’s own rating resolutions. They fund local services such as road maintenance, garbage collection, drainage and streetlighting, which is why counties treat unpaid rates as a direct hit to the services residents expect, not an abstract accounting problem.
The obligation attaches to the registered owner of the land, not to whoever happens to be living on it or renting it out. It applies whether the parcel is vacant or built on, and whether you hold it as freehold or as a long lease. If your name is on the title as proprietor, the rates bill is yours to settle, even if you have never visited the property or collected a shilling of rent from it.
This is different from land rent, which is a separate charge the national government levies specifically on leasehold land and which is collected through a different system entirely. Our guide to land rates and land rent arrears in Kenya covers that broader national picture; this article focuses specifically on county level land rates and the enforcement now underway in Nairobi.
How Nairobi’s 2027 land rates were calculated
The Gazette Notice dated September 4, 2026 was issued under section 1(s)(3) and section 56(1) of the National Rating Act, 2024, and it sets two different calculation methods depending on the size and nature of the property. Small, mostly residential plots pay a flat annual charge: land of 0.1 hectares or less pays Ksh 2,560 a year, land between 0.1 and 0.2 hectares pays Ksh 3,200, land between 0.2 and 0.4 hectares pays Ksh 4,000, and anything larger than 0.4 hectares pays Ksh 4,800.
Larger private and public properties, including commercial and agricultural land, are instead charged a uniform rate of 0.115 percent of the property’s value, based on the 2019 Draft Valuation Roll rather than a fresh valuation exercise. The county has built in protection against sudden jumps: if your 2027 rate works out lower than what you actually paid in 2022, you stay at the 2022 figure, and if it works out to more than double what you paid in 2022, your bill is capped at twice that 2022 amount. If you have a pending objection to the 2019 Draft Valuation Roll that the Valuation Board has not yet resolved, you keep paying your prior rate until that objection is settled.
These figures are described as unchanged from what applied through 2026, which means the real news in the September notice is less about the numbers themselves and more about confirmation that they will carry through into 2027 while the underlying valuation roll stays unresolved. The new rates take effect January 1, 2027, so the arrears crackdown happening right now is being enforced against rates that were already due under the existing schedule, not against the 2027 figures themselves.
How to check your land rates arrears in Kenya
Start with your parcel’s land reference number, which you will find on your title deed or on a current land search. Without it, the county revenue office cannot pull up an accurate account, and a mismatch between an old parcel number and a subdivided or renumbered one is a common reason people get an incomplete or wrong statement.
From there, you have two practical routes. The first is to log in to Nairobi County’s ePayments portal and look up your account by parcel number to see the outstanding balance directly. The second, often more reliable for older or disputed accounts, is to visit or write to the county’s revenue administration office and request a written statement of account, which will show the years in arrears, the principal owed, and any penalties and interest that have accrued on top.
If you inherited the property, bought it some years ago, or simply are not sure the records under your name are accurate, ask an advocate to pull the statement on your behalf and cross check it against your own payment receipts, if you kept any. Arrears records do occasionally carry errors, duplicate charges, or amounts tied to a previous owner that were never properly closed out, and those are much easier to correct before an auctioneer gets involved than after.
Waivers and discounts: what has been offered, and what to check now
Nairobi County has a history of offering limited time waivers on the penalties and interest that pile up on unpaid land rates, while still requiring the original principal amount to be paid. One such waiver, gazetted in December 2025, offered a full waiver on penalties and interest for anyone who paid their outstanding principal between December 15 and 31, 2025. Earlier in 2026, the county also offered a smaller discount, around 3 percent, for ratepayers who settled before a March deadline.
Those specific windows have since closed, and the current defaulter crackdown that started in July 2026 is explicitly the enforcement phase that follows them, not a new waiver. Counties in Kenya announce fresh waiver periods often, usually around a fiscal year end or a push to raise collections. Check the county’s current announcements or the ePayments portal before you pay a large arrears balance in full.
Do not assume a waiver is active just because you remember reading about one. The official Nairobi County page describing land rates waivers, at the time of writing, still displays wording from a waiver period that ran years ago, which is a useful reminder that these announcements are not always kept current online. Confirm the live status through the ePayments portal itself or by calling the county revenue office directly rather than relying on an old page or a secondhand claim.
What actually happens if you ignore a demand notice
The crackdown that began in July 2026 follows a fairly predictable sequence. First come demand notices and SMS warnings giving owners a window to pay. Field officers then physically mark non-compliant buildings and compile lists of chronic defaulters, concentrating first on properties with large accumulated debts. From there, the county has said it will write to banks to freeze the accounts of persistent non-payers, and it has engaged licensed auctioneers to handle the actual sale of property where arrears remain unresolved.
The county has also said it will publish the names of defaulters, which is a reputational consequence on top of the financial one. None of this happens overnight. The pattern described by county officials is demand notices first, then escalating enforcement against the accounts with the largest and oldest arrears, rather than every single defaulter being hit with an auctioneer notice on the same day.
Do not treat the timeline as generous. The county has specifically said its enforcement teams are using improved systems to track payment compliance more accurately than in past years, and officials have been explicit that chronic defaulters with the largest debts are the priority targets, which includes a meaningful number of owners in high value estates who simply assumed a bill this size would never actually be pursued.
Watch for scammers exploiting the crackdown
Whenever a county publicizes an enforcement drive this heavily, fraudsters follow close behind. A well publicized crackdown gives a con artist an easy script: call or visit a property owner, claim to be a county officer or an appointed auctioneer, and demand urgent payment to a personal account or through an unofficial channel to “stop” a seizure that may not even be real.
Genuine county revenue officers and the licensed auctioneers appointed by Nairobi County will not ask you to pay land rates into a personal M-Pesa number or an unnamed agent’s account. Payments go through the county’s official ePayments portal, designated banks such as National Bank of Kenya, or recognized county pay bill numbers. Ask anyone claiming to represent the county or an auctioneer for identification and a reference number, and verify both independently with the county revenue office before paying anything.
This is also a good moment to apply the same caution covered in our guide to common land scams in Kenya: pressure to pay immediately, a refusal to provide verifiable identification, and insistence on an unusual payment method are the same red flags that show up in land fraud generally, not just in rates collection scams.
Does this apply if you own land outside Nairobi?
Land rates are a devolved function, which means every county sets its own rates, its own valuation basis, and its own enforcement timeline under the National Rating Act, 2024 framework. A buyer or owner in Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru or any other county will not find Nairobi’s specific Ksh 2,560 to Ksh 4,800 flat rate bands or its 0.115 percent valuation rate applying to them directly, since those figures come from Nairobi’s own September 2026 Gazette Notice.
What does transfer across counties is the underlying logic. Rates accrue annually against the registered owner regardless of occupancy, arrears carry penalties and interest that grow the longer they sit, and most counties eventually move from quiet non-enforcement to active collection once the unpaid total becomes politically or financially significant. If you own land anywhere in Kenya and have not checked your county rates account in a while, Nairobi’s current crackdown is as good a prompt as any to check your own land rates arrears in Kenya now rather than waiting for your own county to start sending auctioneers.
If your main concern is land rates specifically in the context of buying a property, rather than clearing arrears on land you already own, our existing guide on how to check land rates in Kenya before you buy walks through that purchase side step by step.
If you are buying land, arrears follow the parcel, not just the seller. Unpaid land rates are a charge against the property itself, so a seller’s debt can become your problem the moment the title transfers into your name if it was not cleared first. Before you complete any purchase, ask the seller for a current rates clearance certificate from the relevant county, and confirm it independently with the county revenue office rather than taking the seller’s word or a photocopy at face value.
Frequently asked questions
Are land rates the same thing as land rent in Kenya?
No. Land rates are an annual charge from your county government on land within its boundaries, funding local services like roads and garbage collection. Land rent is a separate national government charge specifically on leasehold land, collected through a different system. You can owe arrears on one, the other, or both, and clearing one does not clear the other.
How do I find out if my Nairobi property has land rates arrears?
Use your parcel’s land reference number to look it up on Nairobi County’s ePayments portal, or request a written statement of account from the county revenue administration office. If the property passed through inheritance or several owners, it is worth having an advocate pull and verify the statement, since older accounts occasionally carry errors or charges tied to a previous owner.
Is a land rates waiver currently available in Nairobi right now?
Not as a standing, always available offer. Nairobi County has granted specific, time limited waivers in the past, including one in December 2025 and a smaller early payment discount earlier in 2026, but both windows have closed. Counties announce fresh waivers periodically, so check the county’s current announcements or the ePayments portal directly before assuming one does or does not apply to you.
Can the county really auction my property over unpaid land rates?
Yes. Nairobi County has appointed licensed auctioneers and private debt collection firms specifically to recover unpaid land rates, penalties and interest from chronic defaulters, and has said it will freeze the bank accounts of persistent non-payers. The enforcement has focused first on properties with the largest, oldest accumulated debts rather than every defaulter at once, but the legal basis to proceed against any unpaid account exists.
Do I need to clear land rates arrears before selling or transferring land?
In practice, yes. Buyers and their advocates typically require a current rates clearance certificate as a condition of completing a transfer, precisely because arrears attach to the property rather than disappearing when ownership changes. Trying to transfer land with unresolved arrears usually just delays or derails the sale rather than passing the problem on cleanly.
What if I inherited land and did not know the rates were unpaid?
The arrears still attach to the parcel, not to whether the current owner personally caused them. Once you are the registered proprietor, or once succession has transferred the title into your name, the county will expect you to clear any outstanding balance. It is worth checking the rates account as part of handling succession, before you assume an inherited property is fully clean.
Does Ardhisasa show whether a property has land rates arrears?
No. Ardhisasa is the national Ministry of Lands platform for land registration, title records and related transactions, and county land rates accounts are not part of what it tracks. For rates specifically, check with the relevant county’s own revenue system, such as Nairobi’s ePayments portal, rather than looking for the information on Ardhisasa.
Someone contacted me claiming to be a county auctioneer. How do I verify that is real?
Ask for identification and a reference number, then verify both independently with the Nairobi County revenue office rather than trusting what the person shows you on the spot. Genuine county collection never asks for payment into a personal account or an unofficial channel. If anything about the approach feels rushed or pressured, treat that as a warning sign rather than a reason to pay faster.
See also: if you are checking a property before you buy rather than clearing arrears you already owe, our guide on how to check land rates in Kenya before you buy covers that process from the purchase side. For the fraud patterns that tend to show up alongside a high profile enforcement drive like this one, see our guide to 6 land scams in Kenya and how to spot them. And since unpaid rates are ultimately tied to who actually holds the title, our guide on how to verify a title deed in Kenya via Ardhisasa is worth reading alongside this one if you are not fully certain the registered details on your property are correct.
Sources: National Rating Act, 2024 (Kenya Law) and Nairobi City County: land rates penalties and interest waiver information.
Paul researched Kenya’s land verification process in depth to build this guide, drawing on Ardhisasa’s official documentation and Kenya’s land registration regulations. Questions or corrections: admin@landtitlehub.co.ke.