Congratulations @Mugundaman you just made the century post on the thread

It appears real estate in Kenya is going haywire...

Kenya’s property market is sitting on sinking sand

@2012 noted seven pages of real estate auctions advertisement in a newspaper a while ago meaning that things are really thick...

This guy is talking much yet saying a big round zero. Is he related to Lukorito Jones?
The guy does not even have a clue what he is talking about especially with regards to basic economics: supply and demand. He readily admits that the housing deficit is real, then argues in a very amateurish way (without providing concrete and verifiable figures) how that deficit is close to irrelevant. Then (like a very well known Wazoo personality) he paints growth as a "decline" because the rate of growth slowed a bit. That's like saying your shares in Centum "declined in value" because instead of rising from 28 to 35 like they did last year, they rose from 35 to 36! Total balderdash! Growth is growth!
I will tell him like I have told every other naysayer on Wazoo and beyond: WAKE US UP WHEN YOU REPEAL THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND NOT JUST IN KENYA BUT IN THE WHOLE WORLD. The commies tried and failed miserably. No force on earth can tame the supply vs demand dynamic. None! The sprawling Kenyan middle class is growing in both wealth, experience and expertise and is the prime source of domestic demand - the lifeblood of any economy worth its salt. This middle class is an almost virtually unlimited source of demand over its lifetime, meaning, if a middle class Kenyan is earning a decent income from his investments and/or payslip and has a house, it is only a matter of time before his savings have accumulated again to the point he can buy yet another house and/or invest in real estate allied businesses in a beautiful cycle that will only end at the grave. Remember Kenya has a paltry number of mortgages (which is a wonderful thing) meaning the sprawling middle class either buys cash or near cash (buys plots, builds slowly over time and repeats) meaning unlike other casino economies, the wealth of Kenya's middle classes is built painstakingly and securely over time which reduces micro-risk to almost zero for them.

Actually Mugunda has a point here.

I read the article and thought the author went a tad overboard with his doom mongering. But If you read many of his past articles they have been couched in the same 'sky is falling' hyperbole. Why? I don't know.

The recent contraction in the commercial and high end real estate, caused by overbuilding and unrealistic pricing of land and houses, is not evidence of burble burst. The real demand, Mugunda is right, is in the middle and low end, and that will not even be slaked by Uhurus 500K houses.

One more thing, collapses like the one of the US in 2008, are caused quite often by concentrated risk exposure, in that case the banks were exposed through subprime lending and opaque repackaging of loans. Kenyas real estate risk is dispersed and borne largely by Kenyan savers directly. Otherwise, with 20,000 mortgages, no banker loses sleep over a real estate sector collapse.

Pervasive consumption lending is another story of course, but the interest rate Cap has largely put an end to that foolishness.

No Edermann is doing its development on its own private property. The affordable housing under sonko was Public private partnership commenced under kidero



This more of hadithi hadithi projects unlikely to take off any time soon. By the time the tenants fight it out in court it will be 5 years even before ground-breaking