By Abdullahi Salad - Reporter
MOGADISHU, 6 October 2026 Mogadishu is growing fast, with new apartment blocks, villa neighbourhoods and land prices that have risen tenfold over the past few decades. But almost none of these homes are bought with a salary and a mortgage.
Slightly fewer than half of Somali households own the home they live in, according to a 2022 survey of more than 7,000 households. In urban areas, the share drops to 43%.
In Mogadishu, renting is how most people live. A separate 2019 study found that 71% of households in the capital rent.
The maths explains why. Based on the average of 2022 estimates from the World Bank and the International Labour Organization, the monthly wage for formal jobs in Somalia is $263.
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A new, modest home in Mogadishu starts at around $50,000. If someone earning that wage saved 15% of their income every year - a reasonable share given food, rent and household expenses - it would take more than a hundred years to save enough. A $200,000 home would take more than four hundred years.
That is the reality in a country with no national minimum wage system and no conventional mortgages, where banks offer financing that usually requires a 30% down payment, with the remainder repaid over a short period that can be as little as three years.
Compare that with Kenya, where formal-sector wages are several times higher than in Somalia, and low-cost apartments in Nairobi can be bought with a mortgage. That means a buyer can own a home once they pay the deposit, then repay the loan over roughly 15 to 20 years.
In Mogadishu, most people do not save the money from wages. They rely on remittances sent by the diaspora - estimated to be equivalent to 20 to 30% of the country's gross domestic product.