By home & Away correspondent
The Kitengela area has experienced significant real estate growth in the past five years and is poised for explosive economic growth in the next few years. A big factor has been the expansion of Nairobi, which has seen its population grow to more than four million, resulting in an insatiable need for housing, as well as commercial and industrial zones.
According to Ndatani Enterprises director and expo organiser Alex Muema, the self-sufficient urban town model in Kitengela has seen the area bubble with real estate investors, mostly because this area has solid fundamentals for a self-sufficient residential town with a bustling business district.
Says Muema: “The Kenya Export Processing Zone (EPZ), as well as some premier blue chip companies and government parastatals such as the East African Portland Cement, the Athi River Mining, Kenya Meat Commission and Kenchic Ltd, are located within this locality raising the stakes of real estate development.”
Another factor that has made Kitengela’s property a hot cake is the location of existing residential communities within this township, making it a safe haven for home seekers.
“We have seen the Jamii Bora estate and Superior Homes among other real estate development companies engaged in the execution of planned housing developments on vast swathes of land. These developments are modelled in a way that they offer residential units as well as schools, recreation and religious facilities. This is what any land buyer is looking out for,” says Muema.
Key aTtractions
Moses Njahi, a homeowner at the expo was scouting to buy a quarter of an acre of land purely for speculative purposes.
Njahi says that the refurbishing of the Athi River-Namanga Highway is one of the attractive factors any real estate investors keen on either putting up houses or buying land ought to be looking out for.
“The physical location was often mentioned as a drawback due to its distance from Nairobi. But with the carpeting of this road and the, four lane Mombasa road, this has been reduced into a less than 30-minute or so commute.” says Njahi.
The result has been the march of economic activity southward along the Nairobi-Athi River corridor as developers, the government and home-seekers at large search for habitable areas.
Purchasers of land during its nascent days, have been greatly rewarded with exponential returns on property values. This area’s growth and development potential is clear and as a budding community offering opportunities to purchase land or real estate, it is now any homeowners dream.
During the recent Kitengela Homes Expo, it was clear that most visitors were looking for parcels of land to purchase as opposed to buying residential houses.
A land surveyor, Martin Kiprop, noted that land subdivisions and land sales have encouraged the spread of unplanned urban settlements in Kitengela, with a high concentration being observed along the Nairobi-Kajiado highway.
CHANGE OF USE
“This land conversion has been accelerated in recent years by frequent droughts, forcing pastoralists to sell their land to the moneyed who buy them in large tracks and then resell them in small portions of an eighth or even quarter acres at a profit,” says Kiprop.
