Kigali — Rwanda's real estate players are seeking partnerships with regional investors to access the East African Community (EAC) market.

Real estate developers in the country say they have been seeking partnerships with foreign investors without knowing that those in the region offer more value. "We were always looking for investors in Europe and America without knowing that the best investors are in East Africa," the Managing Director of DN International, a local firm in real estate development Mr. Nathan Lloyd says.

Lloyd says regional investors are aware of challenges developers face and collaborating with them would become a lot easier to design joint projects. He believes that such partnerships would increase the market size.

"Now that Rwanda is part of the EAC, it opens up us an additional market. As opposed to looking at a population of 10 million, we have to look at a population of over 100 million." Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania only need more than 4.8 million residential houses per annum and the supply is quite lower than the demand.

This calls for more investment and partnerships offer a viable option to bridge the gap. Lloyd says the East Africa Real Estate Advisory Council being formed will help Rwandan players to grow their market. "Our expectations from the council are mainly to grow the market."

He says more benefits like technology transfer, access to capital and networking await Rwandan real estate developers in the regional market. Meanwhile real estate sector still faces many challenges in all EAC partner states. Some challenges include weak regulatory institutions, corruption in some of these institutions, weak legal framework, delays in getting licenses and registering a company.

These challenges could hinder the sector growth potential. Regional players say that to address some of the challenges they may be forced to engage governments. Construction and real estate sector contributed around 16% to Rwanda's Gross Domestic Product in 2008.

Rwanda needs more than 20,000 residential houses every year but about 300 are provided.