Sh150 rent in Maragua as crime hurts real estate

Murang’a is one of the counties around Nairobi that has benefitted from the real estate buzz in the city.

Not so, however, for Maragua, a town in the county that has it so bad when it comes to security that the Chairman of Maragua West Business Community Pius Murage wants the government to establish a military base here.

Murage has also wishes the government bought off half the town and started an animal orphanage. 

“The military presence will drive the gangs out and the orphanage will bring us tourists. That is the only way to liberate this town from the strong muscled grip of criminals,” he says.

Ranked by the County Security Committee as the most dangerous town in the county, property rates have remained at their lowest, a situation that has seen investors shun the town in favour of neighbouring towns.

This despite the town being classified favourably by the area chamber of commerce as a town with a daily cash flow of between Sh10 and Sh25 million.

The town’s Nyumba Kumi security initiative member, Joram Chege, says the worst hit areas of the town are Mathare, Rurii and Boarder estates. The only area of the town that retains hope for growth is Milimani.

To capture the scenario, he says a quarter of an acre piece of land in Mathare is currently rated at a bargainable Sh300,000, the same in Soweto is going for Sh250,000 and for Sh80,000 in Rurii. The same portion in the neighbouring Samar area goes for Sh1.2 million.

Josephine Njoki of Jokasa Property Agents in the town says for the past 10 years, property value in the town has remained dormant and transactions purely based on mutual agreements.

Operating in the dark

“The property market on this town is not structured. You cannot authoritatively say this is the average cost of a piece of land, building or even average rent. We have properties in very strategic places of the town that today have no commercial stability,” she says.

She says the town has a low return on property investments since residential rents range from as low as Sh150 (for a single room) in some of the growing areas to Sh1,500 in areas that neighbour the local police station.

The Annual Crime Report Card 2018 indicated that the town has hard drugs networks, violent gangs with territorial bases, business rivalry based gangs, muggers and ordinary town toughies who wreak havoc within the town’s social and economic setup.

The situation is made worse by reports of rapes, children trafficking, murders, kidnappings and violent attacks.

Former area MP Elias Mbau says the town has to be freed from such negative profiling. “It is the work of the security agents to work and deliver the residents from insecurity. We have been expressing our complaints in stakeholders meetings. It is for the security agents to tell us whether they are just lazy, or a clueless on their mandate,” he says.

Murang’a County Police Commander Josephat Kinyua says his team is working hard to secure the town.

“We have in place structures to ensure security prevails in this town. We have incorporated area community into our action plan and we have a way of responding to insecurity incidents at the shortest time possible,” he says.

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