Cytonn Group Chief Executive Officer Edwin Dande has said affordable housing will not be realised unless the question of financing has been addressed and the role played by Kenya’s capital markets in infrastructure development.
He was speaking to investors and government officials when Cytonn Real Estate, the development affiliate of Cytonn Investments, handed over the second phase of its Kshs 5 Billion Flagship Project, The Alma on Thursday. The event was attended by the Kiambu Governor, Dr. James Nyoro.
The Alma is Cytonn Real Estate’s latest residential development located in Ruaka Town of Kiambu County.
The majority of urban dwellers in Nairobi live in very basic dwellings without comprehensive lifestyle amenities, reliable water and power supply. Cytonn Investments seeks to address this problem by building comprehensive lifestyle developments, such as The Alma.
“We are definitely committed to the affordable housing agenda. But it’s important to mention that, affordable housing will not work unless we resolve financing challenges. Our Capital markets’ infrastructure is outdated. We really need to upgrade that capital markets infrastructure so that we are able to raise lots of money to give Kenyans respectable places to live,” he said.
According to Dande, “The Alma is not really a story of real estate development, is a story of real estate finance on how we were able to put together five billion shillings in order to be able to develop something like this.”
He explained that in raising the Ksh 5 billion, two percent ( Ksh 105 million) from the regulated market under its Cytonn High Yield Fund.
15 percent (Ksh 650 million) from banking partners and 85 percent of the funds (Ksh 4.3 billion) was raised from privately placed funding a product they call the High Yield Solution.
Dande said Cytonn Real Estate continues to build next-generation developments in the country as it attempts to help Kenya achieve its Affordable Housing agenda.
“Once we are done with this development and delivered, we are going to do another block and we call it the Annex at The ALMA, which is going to be mainly affordable housing,” he said adding that “The cheapest house on this site is roughly seven million shillings on that particular development, we want to bring it as low as three three million shillings.”
Cytonn Investments is primarily focused on offering alternative investment solutions to individual high net-worth investors, global and institutional investors and Kenyans in the diaspora interested in the high-growth East-African region.
Currently, it has over Ksh 82.0 billion of investments and projects under its mandate, primarily in real estate.
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