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.”

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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 deliver promises, overpriced property, and non-existence parcels of land and lack of genuine title deed of the property.

This is the same pain that

BY INVERSK TEAM

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

investment. Besides, growing areas have higher appreciation rates and have better capital gains and resale profits. Some of the projects such as Harmony Estate (I) and Umoja Heights are based in Nairobi Metropolitan making them easily accessible by people working within and around the central business district and the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

According to Kihonge, the properties are affordable and the house units have the best prices in the industry. For example, the introductory price for an eighth plot in the open land estate (Plains Estate) was as low as Ksh 85,000, making it affordable by people of all income brackets.

The payment plans are also flexible, with investors required to pay a deposit and clear the balance in a specific period depending on the project terms.

However, such terms are not cast on stone as the company always gives a listening ear to serious investors and adjusts accordingly depending on clients’ needs. At the end of the day, the objective is to help people to own homes, affordable homes.

The company offers free site visits where investors can view the properties before the actual purchase as part of the due diligence process.

Housing Gap

There is a huge housing gap not only in Kenya but also in Eastern Africa. This is especially caused by the rising population and the migration of people to the urban areas in search of better economic prospects.

It is estimated that by the year 2050, half of the population will be living in major cities and towns. The supply of housing in most towns is therefore low and it cannot meet the demand from the growing number of residents. However, on a positive note, private investors such as WishWork Homes are reducing the demand gap to cover the shortfalls.

There should be a financial product targeting developers who can introduce flexible repayment plans or peg to rental collection or with attractive tax incentives. These types of financial products can perform much better with the middle class in East Africa where the majority of home constructions are reportedly being carried on in incremental basis and the bulk of them are not funded by mortgage loans for a variety of reasons.

A very interesting product in this set is the Jamii Bora’s tenancy purchase agreement in Kenya. This is where tenants enter into a one-year renewable agreement in which their rental payments are equivalent to a 20-year mortgage bond monthly repayment. This means that a tenant can convert his/her tenancy into a house purchase at any time by using the previous rental payments as a down payment.

In the same way, well-structured funding can enable the developer to charge a price for small but decently built houses in which the financing may be repaid at a rate as fair/close to rental payments.

The real estate developer is particularly investing in gated communities since there is high potential in the area. In Kenya, more and more people in the middle and high-income brackets are choosing to live in a gated community for reasons such as safety and security, extra privacy, provides an air of exclusivity, and a sense of community.

WishWork Homes is also working on ways to offer affordable housing in Eastern Africa. To achieve this, it’s targeting people earning as low as $300 per month and helping them in their journey towards homeownership.

To reach people even in the diaspora, the property developer has stationed agents in various countries including Zambia, South Sudan, Dubai and Qatar. Going forward, the company plans to increase the number of agents across the world and expand its operations in the whole of Eastern Africa, to solve the problem of house gapping.