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YES.The new buyer prepares 2 cheques,one to offset the mortgage and the other for the purported owner.

proximity to the southern bypass gives these houses a commercial income/office/shop potential in future.

Athi View were selling at 9.95M off plan last year in August. They wanted a down payment of 2M and you can book your house.

They have since started work, and even gone to the extent of tarmacing the road from Mombasa Road. Now remaining units are selling at 12.5M.

Thats a 25.5% return in less than a year.

Watch that space.

http://www.athiview.com/

I have worked closely with very rich Kenyans and what I have noticed is that the rich are very carefull about managing risk. In fact, they don't take chances with their wealth and health. I believe that is why the very rich choose to invest in real estate or at least will have a real estate portfolio. This is not to say that they do not take loans and mortgages, but these are carefully calculated to ensure they remain on top of things even in the worst case scenario.
Not so for 'Wanjiku'. 'Wanjiku' will jump at any opportunity as long as it holds some hope, no matter how vague, of a better tomorrow. This therefore becomes her downfall and with each successive defeat, she grows more desperate to get ahead and takes greater risks that occasion greater losses. Of course, by pure chance, a 'wanjiku' will take a risk and succeed. Others will look at her and think they can replicate the success by taking even greater risk.
I have decided, the way to get ahead is by losing as little as possible. A sustained 10-15% gain with minimal to moderate risk is better than 100% gain with high risk. By risk, I mean risk to my person rather than risk of the investment. I may afford to lose 10,000 on investment 'A' which is a high risk venture, but my neighbour would be crushed by a 5000 loss in a similar investment.
When I consider mortgage, this is the way I choose to look at it. Chances are, people buying 22 million houses on mortgage can probably afford to buy it for cash. However, they would rather use their cash for something else and can afford to drop that house like a hot cake if bad turns to worse and they will not end up on the street. Of course some 'wanjiku' will try to keep up and when the music stops, she will be caught out in the cold, and start blaming everyone else about it.

A mortgage is not intended to be taken to it's full term, and I am sure if you look at past stats, it will show most mortgages are completed in between 5-7 years.

The essence of a mortgage in the Kenyan setup in my view is to secure the house - which is usually very fast appreciating, as you source/wait for wind fall gains to complete the payments. Mortgage is to shikilia, so you lock the house price. Incomes, like lifestyle generally go up over time and windfall gains are also an economics fact.

The mathematics of NPV, IRR, PBP etc cannot be logically computed with accuracy in our peculiar environment. My advice would be to take a mortgage and hassle to pay as quick as you can, over time you will find you are wealthier, than if you panicked and listened to the likes of @maich

He he he!!! You are paying 97,000/= a month for 20 years for a loan of 6.7million and you are telling people to accelerate to what??? Talk about theory vs reality!!

And if you can set aside more than 97,000/= you are supposed to be creating wealth for yourself not ending up with a fourth floor flat which is what you'll get with 6.7million in this market!

That was the price of half an acre in 2007 and not in 2002. In 2002, KES.4M would have bought him/her 2 acres in Karen.

Exactly!!!