Everything you wanted to ask before trusting us with a house hunt

Seruya is a property discovery and transaction platform, not another listings board. Every property is submitted by a verified owner, checked against ownership documents and physically inspected before it is published. Every agent is verified before they can market a single home. Viewings are booked, scheduled and paid for through the platform, and offers, agreements and commissions are recorded against the same property record.

Yes. Searching and browsing published homes costs nothing and needs no account. You only pay when you are ready to physically view homes, by buying a viewing package. Owners pay nothing to list.

Three groups: property owners who want their home marketed properly, verified agents who want real leads instead of cold calls, and property hunters who want to see homes that actually exist. Each has a portal built for them — the Owner Portal, the Agent app, and the Hunter search experience.

A verified listing means three things have been confirmed: the person listing it is the registered owner or their authorised representative, the supporting documents (title, lease or utility records) have been reviewed, and the property has passed a physical inspection. A listing does not go live on photos alone.

Because paying for viewings is what makes the rest work. A paid booking commits a time slot, notifies the owner and the agent, and puts the agent on the hook to show up — their payout depends on the viewing actually being completed. It also ends the cycle of paying "viewing fees" in cash to strangers for homes that turn out to be unavailable.

Packages range from Starter (5 viewings) and Explorer (15 viewings) through to unlimited options such as Neighbourhood, which covers one location, and Weekend Hunter for Saturday and Sunday viewing. There are also Corporate Relocation, Family, Investor and Luxury packages for specific kinds of search. Live prices, viewing counts and validity periods are shown on the Packages page when you sign in.

Yes — that is what area hunting is for. Instead of booking one property at a time, you book an area and a day. Seruya groups the homes you shortlisted by location, travel time, traffic and viewing duration, then builds one optimised route with a ready itinerary and a single agent to take you through it.

M-Pesa or card. For M-Pesa you enter your phone number and approve the prompt on your handset; the package activates as soon as the payment is confirmed.

You submit an offer through the platform. The owner reviews it and can accept, decline or counter. Negotiation happens on the record, and once terms are agreed the lease or sale agreement is generated and the commission is distributed to everyone who contributed to the deal.

Raise a dispute from the viewing. Because the booking, the slot, the agent and the property record are all on the platform, there is something to investigate — and an agent who wastes your time damages a public track record that includes their attendance and response time.

Nothing. Listing is free and you pay nothing for viewings — the viewing fee is paid by the hunter and shared between the platform and the agents who do the work. You only pay commission on a completed lease or sale, on terms you set when you list.

You choose. Exclusive Agent gives one verified agent the mandate. Multi-Agent lets several approved agents market it in parallel. Open Network opens it to all verified agents covering your area. Invite Only means you pick specific agents yourself. Agents apply to market your property and you approve them — you are never assigned someone you did not accept.

Yes. You set the days and hours you allow viewings, the maximum number of viewers per slot, the notice period you need, and your cancellation policy. Bookings can only be made inside those rules, and you are notified for every confirmed viewing.

Proof of identity, proof that you own the property or are authorised to act for the owner, and supporting documents such as the title, lease or recent utility records. Once these are reviewed and the property has been inspected, the listing is published and agents start receiving it as an opportunity.

Every hunter who books has paid for a viewing package and is a registered, contactable user. That alone filters out most of the unqualified, unscheduled calls landlords currently field, and each viewing arrives with a confirmed slot and a named verified agent.

You submit your National ID and KRA PIN, complete a selfie and liveness check, and link a bank account and platform wallet. Higher verification tiers add business registration, an estate agency licence, physical office verification and background checks. You cannot market a property until verification is complete.

Every vacant property becomes a visible opportunity in your dashboard rather than something you chase. You apply to market it, the owner approves, and it appears in your listings with full marketing rights. Matching favours agents by coverage area, property-type specialisation, closing rate, rating, language and viewing attendance.

Payouts follow the deal, not just access. Roughly 20% of your share is released when a booking is accepted, 30% when the viewing is completed, 20% when an offer is submitted, and 30% when the lease or sale closes. Balances and payouts are visible in your platform wallet at every stage.

Yes. Your profile carries a public track record — completed deals, success rate, customer rating, average response time and active listings — and matching uses it. Agents who show up and close get shown more opportunities.

No. Payments are routed through a licensed payment service provider or an M-Pesa Paybill rather than the platform holding customer balances directly. Wallets on Seruya track what you are owed and what has been released across the transaction; the funds themselves move on regulated rails.

You raise it against the specific viewing, offer or listing it concerns, and it goes to the Seruya operations team with the full record attached — the booking, the slot, the parties and the property history. Outcomes feed back into agent and owner reputation.

In line with the Kenya Data Protection Act, 2019. Identity documents submitted for verification are used for verification and fraud prevention only, stored encrypted, and are never shown to other users — an agent or owner sees that you are verified, not your documents.

Ownership checks and physical inspection stop most of it before publication. After that, duplicate detection, fraud flags and admin review run continuously, and any user can report a listing. Confirmed fraud results in takedown and removal of the account from the platform.