By Rahab Mbiriti (Statistician)
Residential buildings accounted for 85 percent of the completed private buildings reported to Nairobi City County in 2017 according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.
The figures are an indication of the ever-growing demand for residential houses in Nairobi county owing to the fact that over 6.54 million people live within the suburbs of Nairobi and work in the CBD.
The total number of private buildings issued with a certificate of occupancy increased by 9.7 percent from 10,268 in 2016 to 11,202 in 2017.
The value of new private buildings increased by 10.2 percent from 77.7 billion shillings in 2016 to 85.6 billion shillings in 2017, mainly on account of a 9.7 percent increase in the value of residential buildings. This represents the growing value of property in the real estate sector in Kenya.
Kenya has established itself as the preferred real estate investment destination of sub-Saharan Africa. Nairobi acts as a gateway to a regional East African market, which is approaching 150m people. Therefore, the industry has been accelerating at a rapid speed and making a substantial contribution to the country’s GDP growth figures on the back of rising demand for multiple-use and residential developments.
Figures from KNBS further indicate that due to the rising demand for residential and multiple-use buildings, a total of 73 loans amounting to 91.7 million shillings were issued in 2017 by the National Housing Corporation to individuals for construction and improvement of residential houses by County. The highest number of loans were issued to residents of Trans Nzoia and Kiambu counties.
President Uhuru’s government is making efforts to deal with the rising demand in housing and has come up with the affordable housing agenda which intends to construct 500,000 decent, affordable housing units by 2022. However, there has been the issue of if the houses are really affordable for common Kenyans. Also, there has been the debate concerning how the process of selecting people to occupy the residencies will be undertaken since all employers and employees, through the recently passed 1.5 percent housing levy contained in the Finance Act 2018 are expected to contribute towards the realization of the Housing Agenda.
Currently, there is a shortage of over 200,000 housing units annually against the high demand across the country. The government, combined with private developers deliver an annual average of only 50,000 units. We can only hope that the government’s housing agenda will be a success and help solve the housing concern in Kenya.