Horton wrote:
Yes there are quite a few apartments not sold years after completion. Name that immediately comes to mind is One west in Parklands/westlands. I am sure u can haggle. Give em an offer an see how it goes.....what’s the worst they will do? Say no.....
PS ONE west isn’t what mugunda man describes as “substandard”
@Horton
One West with apartments going for
32m a pop is on the other extreme, bro. It is understandable that such units will move
slowly, but they are still moving. Remember real estate is the largest single purchase that the average Joe will make in their lifetime, and even if the money is available to pay cash for, the process of closing the deal (search/due diligence, sale agreement, deposit and lawyer fees, clearing final balance within 90 days, processing title/lease) takes time. I will give you the example of a certain company that builds very high rise high end apartments that retail at 25m off plan and 30m+ once complete. They typically take 4 yrs to build, so by the time they break ground, they have sold just a few units off-plan. By the time they are halfway done, maybe 30% are already sold. Upon completion maybe 50%, then takes another 1-2 years to sell the balance of the units. And these guys have such apartments all over Nairobi. Just because not all the units are sold does not mean the demand is not there. Remember also the capital accumulation process is an interesting one. If Mugundaman has bought your plot for 5m, he may temporarily not be able to buy anything for the next year or so, but as his income and capital accumulates over that year, he might be in a position to buy again the next year. Most investors in real estate are in fact
repeat buyers in the sprawling middle to upper classes and are hence a
theoretically unlimited source of demand over their lifetimes. This is why I keep saying the middle class is the bedrock of any economy and Kenya's middle class has reached a critical mass that will be hard to reverse in the coming decades. Bottom line unless we destroy the Kenyan economy (have a negative GDP growth rate)
and destroy the construction industry (through punitive laws)
and destroy the rapidly growing middle and upper classes, Kenya real estate demand is going away no time soon.