NAIROBI: Shelter Afrique, the Nairobi-based pan-African housing finance institution has penned a Sh2.6 billion finance deal with Kingspride (KP), a local property firm to construct several housing units in Kiambu County.
The agreement by the two organisations would help finance construction of 440 housing units in middle income segments - Ruaka and Kiambu town respectively.
Kingspride Chairman David Karau said the partnership is geared towards boosting the local property market currently facing a huge deficit of housing units. According to government data, the Kenyan market supplies 50,000 housing units against an effective demand of 250,000 units annually.
"Shelter Afrique has provided money to finance the two projects and KP has provided land and other components like sourcing for the construction company," he confirmed. The construction will start early next month," he added.
The new projects will comprise standalone houses and apartments of one, two and three bedrooms. Buyers both from the local and Kenyans in the Diaspora will benefit from a special package dubbed Zero Deposit Kingspride created a few months ago.
Karau made the remarks when he launched the 2015 Dallas Texas Diaspora Expo at a Nairobi hotel. The 2015 property exhibition which has so far attracted 15 exhibitions will be held in Dallas Texas on the weekend of July 4, 2015.
The 2015 Dallas Texas Diaspora Expo will be the second to be convened in US by local property firms. The first one was held in New Jersey last year which attracted thousands of Kenyans living in that country.
The Kenyans Diaspora Homes Expo (KDHE) was founded to link Kenyans in the Diaspora directly to the real estate industry back home.
Shelter Afrique Director in charge of Business Development, Femi Adewole said the partnership is a response by the institution to the huge supply gap in the local property market.
SUPPLY GAP
"The local property market is grappling with huge supply gap thus requiring all the players to combine efforts in order to produce more units. As a Pan-Africa institution we are fast-tracking a broad approach which entails partnering with local property firms and other institutions operating at the low-end market in order to enhance the supply side, " said Mr Adewole.
He added that the Kenyan middle class is expanding rapidly thus exerting more pressure into the industry hence the need to find lasting and credible partnerships for the delivery of affordable housing.
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