Shelter Afrique to finance Sh350m Sigona housing deal

Shelter Afrique is set to partly finance a Sh350 million housing project comprising luxury villas neighbouring Sigona Golf Club near Nairobi, as firms seek to cash in on the high returns associated with development of stand-alone houses as opposed to apartments.

Serene Valley Properties is developing 30 units, comprising three and four-bedroom residential homes, on a four-acre piece of land located on the ridges of Muguga, about 24km from the city centre.

“We conducted a market research on housing demand and trends around Nairobi and came to the conclusion that villas will provide maximum returns,” said Mr Kimiti Wanjaria, a director at Serene Valley Properties.

The villas add to a variety of housing units offloaded by developers in the peri-urban Nairobi lately and come at a time mortgage financing has cooled off.

Highlights from the latest Hass Property Index, a quarterly study of developments in Kenya’s real estate sector, shows that prices for detached houses such as bungalows, cottages and villas have been rising steadily despite the high mortgage costs.

“The strongest house price gains came from stand-alone houses, where asking prices rose by a significant 2.9 per cent, reversing the price falls of last year,” says the second-quarter 2012 report.

The project, dubbed Sigona Valley, has been financed by the pan-African institution to the tune of Sh200 million and will be completed by August next year. Construction work began three weeks ago by Yamini Builders.

The developers, comprising four budding entrepreneurs, said that they had been shunned by 12 different banks because the lenders were concerned with their “profiles and financial backgrounds”, making them to approach the housing finance institution for the loan.

Mr Wanjaria said that half of the houses had been sold on a pre-sale basis, raising additional capital to help in the building of the homes to be sold for between Sh11.95 and 15.95 million.

Each of the exclusive villas sits on 0.1 acres or about 4,356 square feet with access to community facilities such as borehole water supply, a solar heating system, sewage recycling plant and secured perimeter wall fence.

Shelter Afrique recently injected Sh40 million into Makao Masikini, a low-cost mortgage package expected to benefit 2,000 households.