Buying an apartment is becoming costly for home buyers coupled with rising demand indicating a sharp recovery in rental asking price for apartments in the last quarter of 2018 boosting the annual growth to 15.9% “ending three years of lackluster growth and falling rates.”
This is compared to 2018 when HassConsult reported a drop by 3.9% in rental prices across all property with apartments recording the sharpest decline both in rental prices and value.
“We saw an industry-wide recovery in the final months of 2018, with rents rising, sales prices rising, and industry activity picking up generally, after the marked declines of 2017 and early 2018,” said Sakina Hassanali, Head of Development, Consulting, and Research at Hass Consult.
The strongest recovery came in apartment rental prices, which have suffered almost a decade of lack-luster growth, driven by intensive building throughout Nairobi and its suburbs.
“The somewhat slower pace of apartment building in the last two years has finally seen demand catching up with the available space, lifting occupancy and driving apartment rents upwards sharply by November and December 2018,” said Sakina.
“Overall, apartment rental prices rose by 15.9 percent, which was the most marked rise since mid-2009…Detached house rental prices, however, continued to be affected by subdued global demand and the contraction in global grant-based activities.”
The average rental price increase across all property segments stood at 8.6 percent.
However, rental prices in Karen and Nyari fell by 0.5 and 0.6% over the same three months of last year.
Across all areas, sales price growth of 9.0% for detached houses and 9.7% for semi-detached houses similarly reflected the strengthening demand for upmarket properties. But apartment sales prices remained relatively stagnant, achieving growth of just 2.9% in 2018.
