The headline
Look at a property in Rwanda and you can meet three numbers: the price the seller asks, the price the National Land Authority (NLA) records, and Ziinga Value. They are not three guesses at one number. They measure three different things, and a buyer, a seller or a lender who mixes them up reads the market wrong.
1. The asking price: what the seller wants
The asking price is the figure on a listing. It is where a negotiation starts, not where it ends. Nobody records what the buyer finally paid next to the listing, so an asking price tells you what sellers hope for today, and nothing more.
Every price on a Ziinga listing is an asking price, and we label it that way.
2. The NLA price: what land has sold for
The NLA registers land transfers and publishes prices on its Rwanda Land Dashboard. It publishes two families of price, and they should never be compared as if they were one.
- Transaction prices are what land actually sold for, from the transfers the NLA registered.
- Reference prices are the Institute of Real Property Valuers in Rwanda's assessed value of the land.
Two more things to know. The NLA's price figures are annual: the monthly series on the dashboard is a count of transactions, not a price. And the current year is incomplete until it closes.
An example. In Nyarugenge, the NLA's average transacted land price is 23,572 RWF per square metre (dashboard update of 12 August 2026). Across the country, the national average transacted land price rose by 7.6% a year from 2019 to 2025, the last full year (dashboard update of 21 September 2026). The Rwanda Housing Index on Ziinga sets 2019 to 100; the national line stood at about 163 in 2026 to date. That is a nominal average, not a forecast. For comparison, consumer prices rose 15.7% in the year to August 2026, according to the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR).
3. Ziinga Value: what this property should ask
Ziinga Value is Ziinga's own estimate for a single property. A model learns from the listings on Ziinga how size, bedrooms, bathrooms, district and sector, distance to the city centre, property type and the area's recorded NLA price move the price, then applies that to the property in front of you.
Because it learns from listings, Ziinga Value is an estimate of the asking price a property like this one commands, not of the price it will sell for. We test it on listings the model did not see while it learned. In the fit of 1 September 2026, its median error against asking prices was 0.29 in log terms: for half of listings, the estimate lands within a factor of about 1.34 of the price the seller asked. By type: 0.248 for homes for sale, 0.280 for homes for rent, and 0.416 for land for sale, where plots differ most.
Which one to use
- What are sellers asking right now? Asking prices on listings.
- What has land in this area actually sold for? The NLA transaction price.
- What is the assessed value of the land? The NLA reference price.
- Is this listing priced like similar ones? Ziinga Value next to the asking price.
When an asking price sits far above Ziinga Value, ask why: a view, a title, a building, or simple hope. And do not expect the two NLA prices to agree: on the dashboard's own comparison table, transactions ran above reference in 29 of 30 districts in August 2026. They measure different things.
Where to see each one on Ziinga
Check Ziinga Value for a property and read how the model is tested. Follow recorded land prices district by district on the Rwanda Housing Index. Set asking prices against NLA prices in one area on the Nyarugenge area page, or any other district's.