Six Homebuyers Take Noah Real Estate to Court

Jul 4 , 2026. By NAHOM AYELE ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )

A group of six homebuyers has presented federal judges with a detailed legal checklist, demanding compensation for delayed delivery, full utility installations, and coverage for all accumulated litigation costs from Noah Real Estate. The developer has pushed back against these demands in court, dismissing the buyers' claims for future utility securing expenses and secondary losses as "speculative and unproven." The legal stalemate leaves millions of Birr in real estate values frozen as both sides await a judicial ruling on the validity of the post-construction price adjustments.

A lawsuit at the federal courts has turned a quiet quarrel between one of the country's largest property developers and its homebuyers into an open legal fight.

Six buyers have taken Noah Real Estate Plc to court over apartments they say they paid for in full but never received, and over fresh payment demands the developer attached to a late change in how their units were measured. They filed a 50 million Br lawsuit.

The fight turns on a single and deceptively technical question.

Who should pay when a property's registered size grows on paper after it has already been built and sold?

For the buyer, the deal was uncomplicated, a set apartment at a set price. For the developer, the deed that finally arrived comprises a bigger unit than the one it had contracted to sell, and it wants the difference paid. The gap between them is now measured in millions of Birr and years of waiting.

The six plaintiffs - Tamrat Gezahegn, Fitsum Seged Teklehaimanot, Lemlem Tewoldeberhan (MD), Genet Derese, Meseret Girmachew and Daniel Belachew – appealed to judges at the Federal High Court Lideta Division Civil Bench that they had completed their payments yet still held no keys. Represented by Legacy Law Firm, founded and managed by Temesgen Gebre Sellassie, they are pleading with judges to force the handover of homes they consider fully bought.

They may not be the last to do so. Several other buyer coalitions are reported to be preparing parallel suits, a sign that the case could widen into a broader reckoning for the developer.

The disputed homes sit in Noah Victory Apartment, in the Aware area near Women's Roundabout, a development spanning 1,850Sqm around a 19-storey residential tower and part of Noah Real Estate's wider portfolio in Addis Abeba.

Construction began six years ago against an original three-year timeline, and handover came only last May, when the developer announced that 1,341 buyers and business owners had received keys across its Noah Asqual (Enqulal Fabrika) and Noah Victory (Se’toch Adebabay) projects. The six plaintiffs were not among them.

Noah Real Estate operates under Z Plc, founded in 1995 by Zerihun Lakew and his family. It is now led by Tewodros Zerihun, chief executive officer (CEO), and one of Zerihun's sons, a businessman long known for his landmark property bearing his name on Haile Gebresellasie Road, near 22-Mazoria.

The quarter-century-old Zerihun Building was a multi-purpose complex on a 2,400Sqm plot, before the family erected a new building still under construction.

The group reaches well beyond property. It also owns Great Abyssinia, a fast-moving consumer goods company whose brands include Abyssinia Coffee, Abyssinia Bottled Water, and Prigat Juice, as well as Yekatit Paper Converting & Cool Manufacturing.

At the centre of the legal battle lies the question of whether the developer may demand more money before handover once a unit's registered size changes. The plaintiffs argue that nothing beyond the original contract is owed. The developer counters that the extra fees flow directly from the Land Bureau's registration of property areas, not from any of its own decisions.

According to the plaintiffs, their sales contracts set out both the total price and the exact square footage of each apartment at the time of signing. After construction was finished, they say, the Land Development Bureau folded proportional shares of common areas, parking spaces, corridors, elevators and balconies into the registered size of each unit when it issued title deeds.

The recorded apartments came out larger than the contracts specified. On that larger figure, the developer billed for the additional square metres, which the buyers say run into millions of Birr.

The buyers refuse to pay, arguing that nothing new was built. The common areas existed all along, they say, and their appearance in the deeds is an administrative reclassification, not extra floor space to be sold twice.

Their lawyer asks the court for a long list of remedies. They want the developer compelled to hand over the finished, fully paid apartments, and title deeds that reflect only the net square footage in the original agreements. They want the sales contracts finalised and registered once corrected deeds are issued, and any repair costs at handover reimbursed.

They want the units delivered with electricity, water, and sewage fully installed, and their right to claim compensation for any future costs of securing those utilities preserved. They also pressed for proof that all public and private debts tied to the properties have been settled before handover, for damages for the delay beyond the contracted 36-month completion period, and for their litigation costs to be covered.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to guarantee clean deeds, working utilities, settled debts and cover for costs not yet incurred, the checklist of customers who no longer take the developer's word for it.

Noah Real Estate, represented by Yoseph Desta Law Office, dismisses the suit as "baseless." Its defence rests on a clause. The contract, it argued, carries a 10pc tolerance margin, under which buyers may cancel only if the delivered space falls short of the agreed amount.

Above that line, it maintains that nothing in the contract bars an upward adjustment, and that the growth in registered area came from the Land Bureau's mapping and registration method rather than from the company.

The developer asks the court either to order the buyers to pay the extra amount and take their apartments, or to cancel the contracts outright.

The developer pushes back on the rest of the claim, too. Issuing ownership documents, it argued, is the legal duty of the Land Bureau and cannot be forced onto the company. On finalising the contracts, it states that the buyers have to meet their own obligations before any enforcement can follow. And it brushes aside the demand for future losses as “speculative and unproven.”

The Bench first referred the matter to mediation. That process ended without agreement, and the case is now set for a hearing this week.

PUBLISHED ON Jul 04,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1366]