Groovehut apartments
Fully furnished apartment business is booming across the Kisumu real estate market, as holiday makers, lodgers and tenants turn away from hotels to minimize costs.
According to players in the lakeside city’s property market, employees of multinationals and NGOs based in Kisumu – and Kenyans from the diaspora - are the major drivers of the demand for fully furnished apartments.
“The demand for security and privacy by high end tenants and the availability of loans for buying or renting apartments are some of the factors boosting the market,” says Victor Oluoch, the operations manager at Ounga Commercial Agencies.
Kisumu apartments for rent are relatively cheaper compared to the city’s high end hotels, and are already taking away business from the hotels.
A three bedroom apartment with fully a furnished kitchen, Internet connection and electric fence that ensures 24-hour security goes for about Sh70,000 a month. The same unit goes for Sh55,000 for two weeks and Sh5,000 for a day.
The booming construction of furnished apartments has also been fuelled by the Sectional Properties Act which allows buyers to acquire ownership certificates for units separately.
“Initially people were refraining from buying the apartments since title deeds could not be given to individual units in a storey building but to the building as a whole, the amendment of that clause has caused a high demand for home ownership irrespective of its place in the storey building” said Mr. Oluoch.
Some of the new fully furnished apartments that are set to benefit from this new market include Groovehut, King George, Velvex, Kisumu, Park View, Milimani and several others.
