Mortgage Approval Is Not the Finish Line: What Happens Before You Get the Keys

There is a moment in the mortgage journey that nobody talks about. It is not the application, the approval, or the valuation, but the period after your mortgage has been approved and before you get the keys to your home. This is the stage where the process quietly falls apart for most borrowers.

Most conversations around mortgages in Kenya focus on interest rates, income requirements, or the upfront deposit. These are real constraints, but they are not the only ones.

For borrowers who have cleared those processes, qualified, and received approval, a lengthy process lies in the legal stage.

What actually happens after approval?

Getting a bank’s approval is only half the journey. Once a mortgage is approved, the conveyancing process begins. At this point, three legal parties join the conversation: the buyer’s lawyer, the bank’s lawyer, and the customer’s lawyer.

During this stage, verification of ownership, drafting contracts, paying relevant taxes, including the stamp duty, obtaining approvals, and registering the new owner with the Ministry of Lands occur.

Each of these steps requires the borrower’s signature, documentation, fee payments, and, in many instances, their physical presence or active participation on online platforms such as Ardhisasa. Not until these stages are completed does the bank disburse the funds to the borrower.

What causes the delay?

The conveyancing stage alone can take longer than other stages, depending on how quickly documents are disseminated between parties and through government offices.

The borrower could become disengaged, such that by the time they reach the legal stage, the excitement that carried them through months of applications and approvals has faded.

The second is fragmented information. In most mortgage journeys, the borrower is handled by different people at different stages. Each handover is a point where context is lost. Costs that were not mentioned upfront surface during the legal stage. Documents that they were not aware of earlier are suddenly urgent. The borrower is left feeling blindsided because no one gave them the full picture of the whole process from the start.

The third is the technicality of uploading the signatures and necessary documents to online platforms. Borrowers are now required to upload signatures and documents digitally, all while navigating a platform they might be encountering for the first time.

The fourth is additional payments. Beyond stamp duty, borrowers are expected to cover other legal fees, registration fees, valuation costs, land rates clearance, and insurance premiums. Many borrowers arrive at this stage without having budgeted for these amounts, which can delay the process.

What the industry must do differently

The solution requires a deliberate commitment from lenders to provide borrowers with detailed information on the mortgage process, covering every stage from application to title registration.

Lenders should also maintain active engagement with borrowers throughout the conveyancing stage, rather than handing them over to lawyers and waiting for the process to be finalised.

Regular check-ins, clear timelines, and understandable explanations of what is happening and what comes next would prevent many of the delays that currently stretch this stage far longer than necessary.

Finally, digital literacy support must be built into the process. If borrowers are expected to sign documents and upload information digitally on online platforms, helping them navigate that platform should be the lender’s responsibility.

What we owe borrowers

The mortgage journey is long, technical, and at times unpredictable. However, much of the delay is due to a process that was not designed with the borrower’s experience in mind.

What we owe borrowers is clarity from the first step to the final one. That means telling them upfront what every stage involves and that their role does not end at approval. It means treating borrower education as a continuous commitment. It also means taking responsibility for the full experience, not just the parts that happen inside the bank.

At Absa Bank Kenya, we are continuously working to engage our customers and walk them through their expectations from the beginning of the mortgage process to the very end, because the mortgage journey does not end at approval.

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