WHAT Kenyan homebuyers want, at least according to Eddah Musyimi, a property-seller, is a picket fence, friendly neighbours and safe streets for their children to play in. She works at Bahati Ridge, a development near Thika, a town around 50km (30 miles) north-east of Nairobi. For 13m shillings (about $125,000), well-off Kenyans can buy a nice-looking semi-detached house with about a quarter of an acre of garden. The mock Tudor facades and herringbone paving hint at middle England, but in other ways the area would blend easily into Houston or Tampa. With most of its residents commuting to Nairobi along a new motorway, it is one of the Kenyan capital’s first exurbs.
Nairobi has long been a city of colonial villas for the wealthy and privileged, and teeming slums for almost everyone else. But a building boom is starting to change that. At the edges of the city, and in towns nearby, new suburbs are fast replacing coffee plantations. Towards the centre ageing bungalows give way to towering apartment blocks. Property prices have increased almost fourfold since the early 2000s, according to Hass Consult, a local agency. It certainly feels like a frenzy. Property brochures...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1FIdjNS
EmoticonEmoticon