Investor bets on interlock bricks to cut housing cost

Building houses in Kenya is increasingly becoming a costly affair as obscenely high prices of land and construction materials prevent many from realising their dream of owning a home.

This saw 56-year-old construction entrepreneur Ndegwa Mureithi seek a solution for his clients who he says were incessantly complaining about the high cost of material, especially cut stones.

Mr Mureithi’s solution was using interlocking blocks which, he says, cuts the cost of construction by between 30 and 37 per cent thereby improving the affordability of building a home.

Interlocking blocks are made by mixing crusher powder, cement and sand.

“While we use cement in making the blocks, one does not require mortar to link the blocks together reducing the cost of construction considerably,” Mr Mureithi told Enterprise during an interview in Nyeri where he is based.

“One only requires painting his or her wall after completion of the building but even without that, the wall looks beautiful.”

Mr Mureithi ventured into the real estate business two decades ago but has for the most part been manufacturing natural stone tiles at his factory based in Chaka, Kiganjo. He was also making floor and paving slabs as well as natural stone blocks.

A year ago, he decided to diversify into making the compressed interlocking blocks following increased demand from clients in the area.

His company Stone Centre Limited has a daily production capacity of up to 6,000 blocks, which Mr Mureithi says is enough to construct a normal two-bedroom house. He sells each block at Sh33.

Ms Julia Gaitho is one of his clients. Recently, she decided to construct a one-bedroom house outside her compound to rent out for Sh12,000 per month. She expected that 60 per cent of her funds would be spent on purchasing materials with the rest going into labour.

The house cost her Sh800,000 – about half what Mr Mureithi says it would have cost if she had used traditional stones.

“The cost of building a house using these interlocking bricks is incomparable to the one made of conventional bricks. It is cheap and pretty” Ms Gaitho told Enterprise.

Mr Mureithi explained that this cost is not fixed since it is dependent on the kind of finishing that the clients desires.

After they are manufactured, interlocking blocks require at least 21 days to cure after which they can be used.

It takes three days to place the blocks with limited artisan skills. The blocks result in almost zero wastage since they are cut according to the client’s construction specifications, Mr Mureithi explained.

Kenya’s housing market has a cumulative deficit in excess of two million units, against a government estimate of a yearly supply of 60,000 units mainly made of traditional brick and mortar.

The government has in recent years backed alternative building technologies such as interlocking blocks and plastic panels as part of the solution to the housing deficit facing the country.

In a survey released last week, the World Bank noted that Kenya needs to build 244,000 homes a year to meet the demand but noted that less than a quarter of this number are being built.

“Many Kenyans are unnecessarily living in slum dwellings, because of limited supply and lack of affordability,” the World Bank said in its report.

“The problem will only become more acute over the next decades without a serious focus on housing and the finance of housing for the average Kenyan.”

Mr Ndegwa says interlocking blocks is one of the ways that developers can help alleviate this problem and make it cheaper for more Kenyans to become home owners.