Housing in Comoros

Local housing arrangements include private or family agreements, land rental with self-construction and homes built on owned or inherited land. A nationwide standardized rental contract, deposit rule, rent-control system, eviction process or tenant-protection service has not been verified. Current official rent and purchase price series are not reliably available; an indicative CAHF figure placed a low-cost one-bedroom rent at about 60,864 KMF outside the centre and 94,727 KMF in the centre, but these figures are not a current national price guarantee. Land and housing rights can involve modern law, droit coutumier and Islamic law at the same time. Many titles remain unregistered, the cadastre is weak and land disputes are frequent. Before buying, renting land or building, check the owner, boundaries, inheritance history and recorded burdens through the Service des Domaines or cadastre, and clarify relevant family or customary rights. A registered formal transaction cannot be assumed from a private agreement alone. The permis de construire is required before residential construction, including work without a foundation and renovations that change the use, outside appearance, volume or number of floors. The owner, a mandate holder or a demonstrably authorised representative submits information about the applicant, address, location, area, owner, intended use and planned work. The Maire acts as the local authority delegated by the Ministre chargé de l’Urbanisme, with the Services chargés de l’Urbanisme and MATUAFTT involved in planning and land matters. A lotissement requires authorisation de lotir before a seller or developer promises a sale or rental. A certificat is required before a mutation or rental; the Maire should issue it without charge within 15 days, and a further decision may follow within another 15 days, with a possible tacit outcome under the stated procedure. Breaches can lead to one to three months of imprisonment or a fine of 500,000 KMF. A building permit expires if work does not begin within two years, with one possible one-year extension when requested at least two months before expiry; it can also lapse after more than three years of interruption. After completion, notify the authority so Urbanisme can inspect the work and the Maire can issue a certificat de conformité. Failure to make the completion notice can result in a 250,000 KMF fine, while missing the required construction-site notice can result in a 50,000 KMF fine. The reviewed standards indicate a parcel of about 200 square metres and a minimum living space of 9 square metres, but formal compliance remains limited: one review estimated that only about 10% of homes were code-compliant in 2017. Cyclones, floods, landslides, earthquakes and coastal or sea-level risks affect housing decisions. UN-Habitat estimated that about 70% of the population lived in informal, hazard-exposed settlements in 2020, so resilient construction, inspection, certification and secure land rights matter together. Finance may be available through BCC, Banque de Développement des Comores, Union des Meck or Sanduk. BDC has a legal mandate for medium- and long-term real-estate finance and may provide crédit-bail immobilier for housing, but bank access is limited by low financial inclusion, informal titles and weak property data. The Agence Nationale pour l’Habitat, or ANH, operates under MATUAFTT. A post-Kenneth reconstruction programme targeted especially vulnerable cyclone-affected owner households, including homes destroyed or made from precarious materials, displaced households, female-headed households, older or disabled people and households with children under five; its benchmark of about USD 7,500 per home was a project figure for roughly 1,000 homes, not a general market price. Family use and inheritance can affect occupancy even when a person is not the registered owner. Under Article 82 of the 2005 Code de la famille, children have rights to use the family home, and a daughter may have a customary claim to a home built by her parents when she marries. Article 83 generally provides separation of property, while real estate acquired during marriage is generally shared except inherited property; customary practice and the interests of children can affect disputes. More than 80% of court proceedings were estimated to concern land in a 2023 UN-Habitat reference, and there is no reliably documented central service for ending a tenancy or moving out. A household should therefore keep written agreements, ownership evidence, permit records, payment records and family-rights documentation together.