Land prices in Karen and Lang’ata are growing faster than in the rest of the city, according to a Business Daily report on the latest Nairobi land index.
Why a Lang’ata land story is a Kibra story
Kibra sits in the same part of the city as the suburbs named in the index. When land on the other side of Lang’ata Road becomes more valuable, the pressure does not stop at the boundary. Developers start looking at the edges of the settlement, plots that have served as playgrounds or dumping ground for years suddenly acquire a fence, and landlords with rooms nearby begin adjusting rent.
Tenants feel it first, because a room in Kibra is priced against what the surrounding area is worth, not against what the tenant earns.
How to read a land index
These indices track asking prices for plots in a basket of suburbs and satellite towns, usually every quarter. They tell you what sellers hope for rather than what changed hands, and they say nothing at all about rent inside an informal settlement. What moves them is almost always infrastructure: a new road, a water line, a sewer connection, a school.
That is worth remembering when the same numbers are used to argue that a whole side of the city is thriving.
What we are watching
Whether growth in suburban land values shows up as rent increases in the wards next door, which plots on the edge of Kibra are being subdivided and by whom, and whether the county valuation roll and rates follow the new prices.
If your rent has moved in the past year, tell us what reason you were given.
Read the full report at Business Daily
Source: Business Daily
