Get all the data you need about the real estate market in Dar es Salaam
This article is regularly updated to reflect the latest data available, so you can trust that what you are reading reflects the current market as of 2026.
Whether you are just starting your research or getting ready to make a move, this guide will help you understand how much a house costs in Dar es Salaam and how prices differ from one neighborhood to the next.
We cover every major area of the city, from the most expensive coastal neighborhoods to the most affordable zones on the city's edge.
And if you're planning to buy a property in this place, you may want to download our real estate pack about Dar es Salaam.
Fact-checked and reviewed by our local expert
Grace Makoye 🇹🇿
Manager of Operations, Zinza Real Estate
A quick summary table
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Most expensive neighborhood for houses in Dar es Salaam | Masaki |
| Most affordable neighborhood for houses in Dar es Salaam | Chanika |
| Average price per square meter across all Dar es Salaam neighborhoods | TZS 2,100,000 |
| Median house price across Dar es Salaam | TZS 500,000,000 |
| Lowest realistic starting budget to buy a house in Dar es Salaam | TZS 120,000,000 |
| Most expensive house type in Dar es Salaam (by bedroom count) | Four-bedroom houses |
| Most affordable house type in Dar es Salaam (by bedroom count) | Two-bedroom houses |
| Average price for a two-bedroom house in Dar es Salaam | TZS 370,000,000 |
| Average price for a three-bedroom house in Dar es Salaam | TZS 530,000,000 |
| Average price for a four-bedroom house in Dar es Salaam | TZS 820,000,000 |
| Price gap between the most expensive and least expensive neighborhood in Dar es Salaam | TZS 1,000,000,000 (Masaki vs Chanika) |
| Price dispersion across Dar es Salaam neighborhoods | Very high: prices span from TZS 200M to TZS 1.2B at the median level |
Thinking of buying real estate in Dar es Salaam?
Acquiring property in a different country is a complex task. Don't fall into common traps – grab our guide and make better decisions.
Dar es Salaam neighborhoods in 2026 ranked by house purchase price
This table ranks the main neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam by house purchase price, from the most expensive to the most affordable.
For each neighborhood, the table includes the average price per square meter, the median property price, the starting budget, the average price for a two-bedroom house, a three-bedroom house, and a four-bedroom house, the typical buyer profile, the key advantages, the key drawbacks, and the market segment.
Finally, please note you'll find much more detailed data in our real estate pack about Dar es Salaam.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Average Price per Square Meter | Median Property Price | Starting Budget | Average Price for a Two-Bedroom House | Average Price for a Three-Bedroom House | Average Price for a Four-Bedroom House | Typical Buyers | Key Pros | Key Cons | Market Segment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Masaki | TZS 3,800,000 | TZS 1,200,000,000 | TZS 750,000,000 | TZS 800,000,000 | TZS 1,200,000,000 | TZS 1,800,000,000 | Expat executives and senior diplomatic staff | Prime coastal location in Dar es Salaam, strong security, close to embassies, and the best international amenities and infrastructure in the city | Very high prices that put it out of reach for most buyers, limited land availability, and heavy traffic congestion | Luxury |
| 2 | Oysterbay | TZS 3,600,000 | TZS 1,100,000,000 | TZS 700,000,000 | TZS 750,000,000 | TZS 1,100,000,000 | TZS 1,700,000,000 | Wealthy Tanzanian professionals and senior expatriates | One of Dar es Salaam's most prestigious addresses, mature infrastructure, close to the CBD, and strong long-term property value stability | Aging housing stock, limited new supply coming to market, and renovation costs tend to be high | Luxury |
| 3 | Mikocheni | TZS 3,200,000 | TZS 850,000,000 | TZS 550,000,000 | TZS 600,000,000 | TZS 850,000,000 | TZS 1,300,000,000 | Upper-middle-income families looking for a central and well-connected location | Central location in Dar es Salaam, strong infrastructure, good schools nearby, and a good balance between lifestyle and family needs | Traffic congestion, rising prices, and some flood-prone areas in older parts of the neighborhood | Premium |
| 4 | Upanga | TZS 3,000,000 | TZS 800,000,000 | TZS 500,000,000 | TZS 550,000,000 | TZS 800,000,000 | TZS 1,200,000,000 | City professionals who want to live close to the Dar es Salaam CBD | Very close to the city center, established utilities, strong rental demand, and convenient urban living | Limited space, older houses dominate, and redevelopment pressure is pushing land costs up | Premium |
| 5 | Msasani Peninsula | TZS 2,900,000 | TZS 780,000,000 | TZS 500,000,000 | TZS 520,000,000 | TZS 780,000,000 | TZS 1,200,000,000 | Coastal lifestyle buyers and well-paid professionals | Ocean proximity, a growing commercial scene, and a good mix of restaurants and services that make everyday life pleasant | Traffic bottlenecks, uneven infrastructure in some streets, and high demand continues to push prices upward | Premium |
| 6 | Kinondoni | TZS 2,200,000 | TZS 500,000,000 | TZS 300,000,000 | TZS 350,000,000 | TZS 500,000,000 | TZS 750,000,000 | Local Tanzanian families moving up the property ladder | Central location, relatively accessible price point in Dar es Salaam, a strong local community, and good access to schools and services | Infrastructure quality varies widely across the area, congestion, and housing stock is mixed in quality | Mid-Market |
| 7 | Sinza | TZS 2,000,000 | TZS 450,000,000 | TZS 280,000,000 | TZS 320,000,000 | TZS 450,000,000 | TZS 700,000,000 | Young professional families looking for good connectivity at a reasonable price | Good transport links within Dar es Salaam, active commercial areas, improving infrastructure, and solid rental demand | Noisy, congested, limited space, and planning quality is inconsistent across different streets | Mid-Market |
| 8 | Tegeta | TZS 1,800,000 | TZS 400,000,000 | TZS 250,000,000 | TZS 300,000,000 | TZS 400,000,000 | TZS 650,000,000 | Suburban homeowners looking for more space and a quieter environment | A coastal expansion zone in Dar es Salaam with newer housing developments, more space, and a much quieter atmosphere than central areas | Far from the CBD, heavily dependent on transport, and infrastructure is still developing in some parts | Mid-Market |
| 9 | Goba | TZS 1,600,000 | TZS 350,000,000 | TZS 220,000,000 | TZS 280,000,000 | TZS 350,000,000 | TZS 550,000,000 | Families seeking larger plots and a quieter suburban lifestyle in Dar es Salaam | Larger plots than most central neighborhoods, a genuinely quiet suburban feel, and growing popularity among families who want more room | Limited public transport, slower infrastructure rollout, and longer commutes into the city center | Affordable |
| 10 | Kigamboni | TZS 1,500,000 | TZS 320,000,000 | TZS 200,000,000 | TZS 250,000,000 | TZS 320,000,000 | TZS 500,000,000 | Value-focused buyers drawn to Dar es Salaam's coastal zone at a lower price point | An emerging coastal area with real development potential, improving infrastructure, and several planned projects that could boost future values | Reliance on the ferry or long bridge routes, services are still developing, and price appreciation has historically been slower than other areas | Affordable |
| 11 | Mbagala | TZS 1,200,000 | TZS 250,000,000 | TZS 150,000,000 | TZS 200,000,000 | TZS 250,000,000 | TZS 400,000,000 | Budget-conscious Tanzanian families looking for an affordable entry into homeownership | A very accessible entry price in Dar es Salaam, strong population growth, and a busy local economy that keeps demand solid | Infrastructure challenges, significant distance from the CBD, and construction standards in some parts of the area are lower | Budget |
| 12 | Chanika | TZS 1,000,000 | TZS 200,000,000 | TZS 120,000,000 | TZS 180,000,000 | TZS 200,000,000 | TZS 320,000,000 | First-time buyers and buyers who prioritize price and plot size over centrality | The lowest house prices in all of Dar es Salaam, large plots available, and the area sits in a fast-expanding urban fringe with long-term growth potential | Very far from the city center, limited infrastructure today, and long-term development timelines are still uncertain | Budget |
Get fresh and reliable information about the market in Dar es Salaam
Don't base significant investment decisions on outdated data. Get updated and accurate information.
Key insights about house purchase prices in Dar es Salaam
Insights
- House prices in Masaki are more than five times higher than in Chanika, which means Dar es Salaam has one of the widest price gaps between its most expensive and most affordable neighborhoods of any major city in East Africa.
- The jump in starting budget between mid-market and premium areas is steep: entering Kinondoni requires around TZS 300 million, but crossing into Mikocheni or Msasani Peninsula pushes the floor to TZS 500 million or above.
- Kigamboni looks undervalued compared to other coastal neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam. Prices there are roughly 60% lower than Msasani Peninsula, despite sharing the same waterfront appeal and benefiting from planned infrastructure upgrades.
- Price per square meter drops in a fairly straight line as you move away from the Dar es Salaam CBD, which makes distance from the city center the single most reliable predictor of what you will pay for a house.
- Goba offers plots that are noticeably larger than those in centrally located neighborhoods, yet prices are nearly half of what you would pay in Kinondoni, making it the strongest value option for families who need space.
- Dar es Salaam houses priced above TZS 1 billion are almost exclusively found in Masaki and Oysterbay, and they are mostly bought by expatriates and the diplomatic community rather than local buyers.
- The Dar es Salaam luxury market is unusual in that demand is driven more by international buyers than by local high-net-worth individuals, which means prices in Masaki and Oysterbay can hold up even when local purchasing power weakens.
- Flood risk is a real factor in older parts of Mikocheni and Kinondoni. It does not appear dramatically in headline prices, but it is worth investigating at the plot level before making any purchase in those areas.
- Tegeta and Kigamboni are the two neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam most likely to see above-average price growth over the next few years, because both sit in active infrastructure development corridors.
- The mid-market cluster in Dar es Salaam, which covers Kinondoni, Sinza, and Tegeta, offers the best overall combination of price, infrastructure quality, and livability for a buyer who cannot or does not want to stretch to a premium neighborhood.
- Entry-level buyers in Dar es Salaam are increasingly bypassing established affordable neighborhoods like Mbagala entirely and going straight to peri-urban areas like Chanika, where TZS 120 million can get you a real standalone house on a large plot.
- Mortgage access in Tanzania remains limited, which means most house purchases in Dar es Salaam are cash transactions. This keeps prices more dependent on buyer savings and less sensitive to interest rate changes than in markets with deeper housing finance.
Get to know the market before buying a property in Dar es Salaam
Better information leads to better decisions. Get all the data you need before investing a large amount of money.
About our methodology
Understanding how we arrived at these numbers matters. The Dar es Salaam residential property market is not always transparent, and reliable data on house prices can be hard to find. We also believe it is important to show our reasoning. It is one of the ways we make our work solid, transparent, and rigorous, just as you will see in our real estate pack about Dar es Salaam.
First, please note that this data is updated regularly, so what you see here reflects the current values as of today.
In order to get reliable data, we applied a strict source filter. We only used authoritative, verifiable sources, not random listings or unsupported figures. More on that point below.
For each Dar es Salaam neighborhood, we aggregated the freshest house purchase price data available. When possible, we cross-checked multiple sources to confirm the same price range.
This allowed us to estimate the average price per square meter and the median property price for each neighborhood.
We also calculated the starting budget, which represents the lowest realistic entry point to buy a house in that neighborhood. This is not the cheapest possible listing, but a real, achievable floor for a standard house purchase in Dar es Salaam.
For each house category, we estimated an average purchase price based on local market conventions in Dar es Salaam. The typical size and layout of a two-bedroom, a three-bedroom, and a four-bedroom house can vary across neighborhoods, so we adapted our estimates accordingly.
These estimates were not applied as one flat number across the city. They were adjusted by neighborhood and house type to better reflect local ownership conditions and price levels in Dar es Salaam.
This table should therefore be read as a structured market estimate, not as an exact guarantee of transaction prices. Honesty, quality, and rigor are at the core of our work, and they are also what you will find in our real estate pack about Dar es Salaam.
What sources have we used to write this blog article?
Whether it's in our blog articles or the market analyses included in our real estate pack about Dar es Salaam, we rely on verifiable sources and a transparent methodology.
We also aim to be fully transparent, so below we've listed the authoritative sources we used, and explained how we used them and the methods behind our estimates.
| Source | Why it is authoritative | How we used it |
|---|---|---|
| Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics | It is the official government statistics authority for Tanzania, making it the most reliable source for income, population, and urbanization data in the country. | We used it to understand household income levels and urban growth patterns in Dar es Salaam. We then cross-checked those figures against house price data to assess what is realistically affordable at different income levels. |
| Bank of Tanzania | As Tanzania's central bank, it publishes macroeconomic and housing finance data that cannot be found anywhere else with the same level of authority. | We used it to understand how mortgage lending conditions affect house buying in Dar es Salaam. We aligned our price estimates with what buyers can actually access through housing finance. |
| Knight Frank Tanzania Market Reports | Knight Frank is a globally recognized real estate consultancy with active research coverage across major African markets including Tanzania. | We used it to benchmark the distinction between prime and mid-market neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam. We triangulated its pricing tiers against listing data to validate the positioning of each area. |
| JLL Africa Real Estate Outlook | JLL is one of the world's leading real estate advisory firms and produces reliable urban market analysis across Sub-Saharan Africa. | We used it to understand urban expansion patterns in Dar es Salaam and identify which areas are established versus still emerging. We used its findings to validate our neighborhood tier classifications. |
| RE/MAX Tanzania | RE/MAX is a large international brokerage with active local listings in Dar es Salaam, giving it strong visibility into actual asking prices across different areas. | We used it to extract real asking prices for standalone houses across Dar es Salaam neighborhoods. We averaged multiple listings to build realistic price range estimates for each area. |
| Private Property Tanzania | It is one of the most widely used property portals in the region, with structured listings that allow systematic comparisons across neighborhoods. | We used it to compare house prices across Dar es Salaam neighborhoods at a granular level. We filtered strictly for standalone houses to keep the data consistent with the scope of this article. |
| Tanzania Mortgage Refinance Company | It is a central institution in Tanzania's housing finance system and publishes data on affordability thresholds and mortgage market conditions. | We used it to assess what financing options realistically exist for house buyers in Dar es Salaam. We used that context to set starting budgets that reflect what is achievable given current lending conditions. |
| World Bank Urban Tanzania Reports | The World Bank is a highly credible international institution with detailed research on urbanization and housing demand in fast-growing African cities. | We used it to understand the broader pressures behind housing demand in Dar es Salaam. We used its urbanization data to contextualize why prices in certain neighborhoods are rising faster than others. |
Don't lose money on your property in Dar es Salaam
100% of people who have lost money there have spent less than 1 hour researching the market. We have reviewed everything there is to know. Grab our guide now.
