Kenya’s Changing Mortgage Industry

A dear friend of mine emailed me this article yesterday (thanks EW!) that appeared on NBC’s cable website. It mentions Kenya’s changing mortgage climate, which according to the article, began when ….. “Kenya’s financial laws changed, requiring banks to have less cash in reserve. {also} ….Lower interest rates on treasury bonds ….. encouraged banks to find other ways to invest money. These days, Barclays offers interest rates around 13 percent (from a previous high of 30 %) and is opening six new branches in Kenya”. (you can read the full article here:Kenya’s growing real estate industry).

Two thoughts:

1) Public policy (read: politics) does matter and is important (home ownership grew when the banking laws/policies were changed).

2) The article also mentions that most of this new constructions is taking place around Ngong (I thought people were moving away from places like Ngong because of the crime wave?) — I guess if you’ve lived in Kenya all your life, living in Ngong wouldn’t seem that bad, but if you’ve lived in the west and are planning to move back to Kenya, living in Ngong would be out of the question (even places like Athi river would be out of the question). What do you do in Ngong when night falls? barricade yourself behind your walled in fence?

3) Actually, I’d say that if you’ve lived in the west, you’d be happiest either in the heart of Nairobi (read: nothing beyond the confines of Westlands) or in Mombasa (read: the south coast-far away from Mombasa town). And you can just forget about living in the rural areas. Hell No!

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