INVERSK MAGAZINE
INVERSK RISNG STARS
How 29-year-old Stephen is Building Kenya’s Fastest Growing Real Estate Firm He wanted his company to be different and goes all the way to “prepare the title deeds in advance. Our work is only to transfer the deed to their names, by the end of their last instalment payment they walk away with it.” BY INVERSK TEAM
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The media has fed Kenyans with news on how some investors have lost their hard-earned money after investing with unscrupulous real estate providers. Although many go as far as doing due diligence to ensure the genuineness of the parcels of land, money gets lost in several ways. This includes uncompleted projects, failure by companies to delive r promise s, ov erprice d property, and non-existence parcels of land and lack of genuine title deed of the property. This is the same pain that 36 I INVERSK MAGAZINE I August 2020
Stephen Kihonge went through some years back. His desire to own a property led him to invest with a housing cooperative with the hope of owning a home. However, Kihonge’s dreams were cut short after realizing that all his money had gone down the drain. “I injected my money honestly, later to realize it was a loss; it hurt,” he says. As a result, Kihonge decided to establish his own real estate company that offers genuine services and transparency to his clients. He wanted his company to be different and goes all the way to “prepare the title deeds in
advance. Our work is only to transfer the deed to their names, by the end of their last instalment payment they walk away with it.” Kihonge says. ''I don't want any of my clients to fall a victim of losing money in the home investment because I was once a victim of the same'' he adds. Born and raised in Naivasha to a land surveyor dad and business mom, Kihonge never thought he would once become an entrepreneur. His dream, as a high school student who loved Physics, was to work in a construction company. '”In my mind I knew I will work in a construction company but not run a business.” However, one of his uncles bought a factory and offered him an oversight job. Given this opportunity, his uncles taught him handle his own business but never thought about owning constructions. The firm was sold a year later and that rendered him jobless. Using his Ksh 2.5M saving, Kihonge set up a wines company in Karatina which he sold a year later for Ksh 5.4M. His mission was to set up a water distilling company in South Sudan. The plan never materialized as the costs of setting up the firm was much more than he had planned. It is part of these savings that Kihonge used to set up his real estate firm in July 2019. In just 12 months of starting the company, Kihonge and his team have delivered 6 projects (after every two months) turning many people to the land and homeowners through its various projects within a year of their existence in the market. Kihonge also takes his time to train his team every day on the new government policies to enable them to run the business and also taken a step forward on doing a report, land commissions, “For someone to be a good team member, it does not come with his education background or the level of education but it is all about passion, the passion takes a person far.” Kihonge said. Kihonge together with his team at WishWork Homes have conceptualized and completed a range of projects including Breeze Estate (I) to (III) in Matuu Machakos county, Plains Estate (I) & (II) in Sipili Nyahururu, Harmony Estate (I) in Kitengela, Gempark Estate in Garisa road which had 11 units, and Umoja Heights at outering road, Umoja Nairobi. Currently, WishWork Homes has two ongoing projects; Furaha city located at Athi River along Mombasa road and Lengai estate based at Kitengela. The projects are located in areas with high potential for growth and this guarantees investors’ high return on
