What it costs you to live in Nairobi’s posh suburbs

A posh house in Karen, Nairobi. [Courtesy]

Nairobi’s high-end suburbs recorded the highest rental price corrections as the performance of the market slightly improved in the second quarter of the year.

Real estate dealers Hass Consult said Riverside Drive, which has the highest apartment rents at about Sh170,200 monthly, posted the highest corrections of 2.8 per cent in the period.

The Hass Rental Index showed that Langata, whose rents average about Sh85,000, had a 2.9 per cent increase in the quarter.

The index, which covers over 320 suburbs, measures the asking price changes of residential rentals.

Rental prices in detached houses went up 3.4 per cent in the period under review. These dwellings are mostly used by people working in multinational organisations, who continue working from home and whose elimination of mobility costs have enabled higher housing budgets, noted HassConsult.

“Overall property rental prices showed a mild recovery, rising 1.1 per cent in the quarter ending June 2021, firmly driven by the rise in rental pricing of detached houses,” the firm said.

“However, affordability still appears to be driving the apartment rental market.”

The data for the third quarter is yet to be released.

On a larger spectrum, property sales prices dropped 1.7 per cent in a year attributed to the large annual drops in apartment pricing in Kilimani and Kileleshwa.

Lang’ata recorded the biggest quarterly and annual sale price increases at 4.1 per cent and retained the city’s “most affordable property.”

The average rents of mid to upper-class properties have shot up by over 300 per cent in the last 20 years, according to HassConsult, increasing from Sh38,516 in December 2000 to Sh162,743 in June 2021.