Sunset for old buildings in counties

With little land left for new developments in county headquarters, property developers are pulling down squat old buildings and in their place putting up modern multi-storey ones as demand for office space in rural towns soars, writes NICK OLUOCH

Major streets in Kenya’s main towns have over the decades been dominated by single-storey buildings. Such streets include Oginga Odinga Street in Kisumu, Canon Awori in Kakamega, Oloo Street in Eldoret and Cathedral Street in Lodwar.

However, with the expansion of most of the towns, there is renewed pressure on prime land in the towns, with developers keen on getting land closest to the main roads.

And with virtually all land next to the roads already taken, developers are quickly turning their attention to single-storey buildings on the main roads. They buy them, bring them down and then put up modern multi-storey buildings to cater for the rising need for office space in the counties.

According to Joseph Omondi, a director with Lantern Company, a real estate company with interests in Nyanza and Western region, the small nature of most of the towns has meant that there is no more prime areas apart from the land along the main highways. “Most of these towns are basically single street towns where all business happens along one main road,” he says, adding businessmen are usually reluctant to rent houses which are not on the main roads.

Omondi says there have been cases where some commercial buildings have had to be converted into residential ones just because they are deemed too far from the main road, even if they are less than 100 metres from the main road.

“Those who have dared to construct commercial buildings a few metres from the road have had to go for years without tenants,” he says.

Low rent

Kelvin Makori, a Kisii-based contractor, concurs that any house not located on the main highways fetch almost half the rent of those on the main roads.

“Unlike big towns like Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu, everything is concentrated on the main highways,” he says. He says the few traders who have dared to open businesses away from the main highways have been forced to close shop within months of opening up as no customer ventured into the shops.

Because of this, Omondi, says construction companies have been combing county headquarters looking for old single storey buildings, which they then bring down and then put up taller buildings.

So far, he says, Lantern has bought a few old buildings in Migori, Kisumu and Kakamega, which they have brought down and are in the process of putting up multi-storey buildings in their place.

But the new craze has not been limited to just these towns. Throughout the country, older buildings are being brought down and being replaced by taller modern houses as contractors try to cope with the ever increasing demand for office space.

And this has now seen the old houses, which had been for long abandoned and ignored within the towns, suddenly get a new lease of life as they have become the most sought-after facilities as contactors continue to scramble for the few prime spaces within the towns.

This has, as expected, pushed the prices of the older houses, some of which had been staying unoccupied and disused for years.

Beneficiaries

Among the beneficiaries of the new craze is Janet Kowino, a landlady in Migori town who early this year sold off her single-storey building, which had been fetching less than Sh5,000 per month in rent.

“The house was quite old and the tenant was not reliable when it came to paying rent,” she said, adding that when she got an offer from a real estate agency of Sh2 million, she did not think twice about selling the plot.

And due to the high demand for office space, especially in the county headquarters, Omondi is appealing to the county government’s planning departments to come up with policies that will make it compulsory for anybody who is constructing in prime areas to construct multi-storey buildings.

“With no space for expansion, it makes little sense for a developers to put up a single-storey building on prime land,” he says, adding any person who is keen on putting up a house within the man highways should be compelled to ensure that the house is at least five floors.

Giving an example of Migori town which only has one main street running through the town, Omondi says it makes little sense that over 90 per cent of all the buildings along the main Kisii Migori highway are single storeys.

This, he says, has been the main reason for the acute shortage of houses in most county headquarters even as more people move to the counties in search of office space.

“A space which can have as many as 50 offices ends up with only five offices,” he says.

This is supported by Makori, who says the counties have to move in and ensure that developers do not just construct any type of house they want anywhere within the town.

“In developed countries, different streets have got different types of buildings, which are acceptable there,” he says, adding that most towns had plans on which type of houses can be built in which places and says the problem being experienced now is due to employees of the former town councils failing to follow the laid down procedures.

He also blames the lack of expansion spaces in most towns in the country to poor planning as well as developers ignoring the zoning regulations.