Luxurious living at Imara Gardens

By Kevin Oguo

No other development exemplifies this more than the Imara Gardens located behind Sameer Business Park, off Mombasa Road.

Sitting on a four and a half acre piece of land, Imara Gardens offers luxury apartments in three bedroom units. The apartments have spacious rooms and extra servants’ quarters in each apartment block rare in many apartment developments.

The Imara Garden’s apartments go for Sh6.8 million for a two-bedroomed unit and Sh7.8 million for a three bedroomed house.

FIRST PHASE

The project is divided into three phases with each phase having eight blocks, with ten apartments per block.

The first phase of the project was concluded last month, with 40 of the 80 apartments already occupied as of early this month.The second phase of the project is due by November.

“The finishing of the Syokimau Railway Station has indeed had the result of increasing interest in Imara Daima apartments, as well as the whole of the Mombasa Road area because of ease of access,” says Abdullahi Dahir, executive director of Imara Gardens developers. The project will have a full-fledged water supply project. Dug underground in each block of the finished first phase is an 80,000-litre water tank supplying water for the block.

On each block’s roof is an extra 1,000-litre tank for each apartment in the block. Besides these, the apartments are supplied with water from a borehole dug within the phase.

Imara Gardens is also connected to the main city water and sewerage system. Plans are already under way to build a boarding school barely 100 metres from Imara Gardens, to add to the Riara Group of Schools, which borders the project.

The road leading to Imara Gardens is, however, still a rough road, which gets muddy and proves nightmarish to navigate during the rainy seasons.

“The local authority has promised to look into the issue of the road as it is being used by motorists who come to pack their vehicles before boarding the trains,” says Abdullahi.

PRICES

Land prices in the area were expected to go up once the railway station was done. But there is a twist when it comes to Imara Daima. According to Abdullahi, there isn’t much land left here for large-scale development.

“There are a lot of land price speculations, especially following a huge infrastructure such as the railway line. There are a lot of factors to be considered when it comes to valuing land to make it fair for the developer and ultimately the buyer,” explains Abdullahi.

But the question is: Will Imara Gardens raise the price of their second and third phase units to take advantage of increased demand? Or will their stand by their motto of providing affordable housing to potential homeowners?

“The proposal to raise the prices of the rest of the units is already on the table. But the prices are still stable at Sh7.8 million as of last year for now,” said Abdullahi.

He adds: “The future price increase will be based on the prices of raw materials, which are volatile, and expected introduction of county governments and local government taxes as a result of devolved government.”