Insecurity, high cost of land push property firms to ‘city villages’

Similar units in upmarket zones in Nairobi’s Kileleshwa, Lang’ata and Lavington are estimated to cost more than Sh6 million

“This project, the single largest, is expected to trigger price changes with the potential of lowering the prices, which, as a government, we are pushing for to enhance house ownership,” said Soita Shitanda, the minister for Housing.

Mr Shitanda indicated that the huge supply gap, land speculative practices, a tedious procurement, and archaic building code are pushing up the cost of housing.

Official figures put demand at 150,000 yearly units whereas the market can only supply 30,000 units.

Additional space

Mr Litiku reckons that the increased construction of gated communities is allowing developers to provide other social amenities as schools, health services, and recreational facilities such as gyms which minimise costs.

According to Mr Dakane Ali, the managing director of Sahal Construction, the housing project will have a shopping centre, schools, a police post, and a medical centre.

It will have a solar system for warming water and street lighting.

Property developers are responding to the requirements and changing landscape of urban living to allow potential homeowners more than the house floor, the limiting environment characteristic of high-rise estates.

“The gated community concept allows home-owners to have additional space to their typical house-floor available in a high rise building, which only provide common open ground,” said Mr Litiku.

For along time, people valued privacy, hence the preference for ‘lonely’ homes, where residents were said to value not only pin-drop silence but exclusive serenity that define class, clout, and taste.

This is slowly changing thanks to the reality of a struggling economy marked by basic needs taste and rising insecurity.

Less turbulent access to the office and schools for children are also reducing the sheen of exclusivity.

Rising land prices have meant that potential buyers, more or less, pool resources together.

“Land prices within the urban areas have acquired a speculative drive, locking out many middle-income earners from buying such lands,” said Mr Shitanda.