The other day I accompanied by friend to look for a car. He had visited this website where “everything sells” and had taken the contacts of the seller. I must say, am very critical when it comes to second hand cars. Unless I know the owner very well and I have driven the car in the past, I don’t trust that anyone would sell a second hand vehicle when it is in its best condition. With this mind set,...
Advice
First published on February 26, 2013 If you have been to Upperhill lately, you will agree with me that the local banks are going “head to head” as they compete to have the tallest and most fancy office blocks. Owning high rise office blocks looks like the “in thing” for these financial giants. In fact, there are certain big banks that have their head quarters in Nairobi Central Business District...
When Peter graduated from a leading private university, he was very excited. He knew that the sky was no limit for him. He quickly landed a job with a local bank as back office staff. During the orientation week, the bank manager came to address all the new staff members. He said many good things to assure the “fresh blood” that their dream had come true. He went on to tell them how privileged they...
Habida and Joash made a call to me a fortnight ago; the call came from Habida as she was the one I had happened to interact with him in a previous engagement. Joash is the husband to Habida and he happens to work out of the country most of the time. My meeting with Habida was a sheer coincidence where I was involved in the development of luxury apartments for her friend Keziah in the up market area of...
With skyrocketing prices of building materials, especially sand, cement, iron sheets, bricks and stones, developers are trying to look for the alternative materials to reduce the cost of construction. One such approach is the use of interlocking bricks. Interlocking blocks are slowly gaining acceptance, with sector players saying they bring the cost down by up to 30 per cent, compared to conventional...
Urban population in Kenya is rapidly growing posing a major challenge in housing that has seen majority of urban inhabitants reside in informal settlement commonly known as slums. With a deficit of 250,000 thousand housing units per annum, a new building technology in Kenya known as Expanded Polystyrene Panel EPS technology is expected to turn around construction industry. The technology that uses...
First published in November 2013 There was an investor forum in Nyeri county a while back and some of the dignitaries in the meeting asked the Nyeri county Governor to emulate Dr Alfred Mutua, the Governor of Machakos county. Every one seems to be singing praises of Dr Mutua, myself included, but maybe a critical look into his ambitious plans for Machakos might open our eyes to the harsh reality that he...
So I get this email from a lady from a local bank asking to collaborate with us on projects. She rightly points out that because most projects are killed by lack of financing, we should work together seeing that I am deeply involved in this sector. She goes on to give me snap shot of their success projects done in town, which are quite impressive and are the talk of town. Wait a minute, are banks now...
Qualifying for a mortgage is a process that begins with self. Self evaluation helps to determine ones level of commitment and prepare one psychologically especially on what to expect. This culminates with an interview with a mortgage lender to determine the various options available and it is the first step in risk assessment performed by the lender to determine key fundamentals of lending including...
First published on April 15, 2014 Last Saturday I was speaking to several leaders of various cooperative societies and saccos in Nairobi and its environs. The default thing that these saccos (and am sure this is what your sacco or coop society is doing, raise your right hand if am wrong…) do is buying large parcels of land, they subdivide it and sell it to its members and make a “small profit”. This...