As many scramble for 100 feet by 50 feet plots in Nairobi and its environs, there is a new rush among the super-rich to get away from the city and acquire plots of up to 230 acres in conservancies located in the wild.
Lolldaiga Conservancy, in Nanyuki, is the latest to join the foray, with 11 plots for sale in Lolldaiga Valley. The smallest plot on sale is Forest Lugga East, at 15.2 acres going for $395,000 (Sh51 million) while the largest is Big Glade being 233 acres.
Big Glade is the main jewel of the project, giving the owner the best house site in the area with scenic views of Mt. Kenya.
The plots have names, and distance is given in flight time – 45 minutes from Nairobi by air – signalling the calibre of clientele the project is targeting.
Besides buying the land on a leasehold for 99 years, one is expected to adhere to strict construction rules set by management to ensure the least possible interference with the natural habitat.
The rules include houses being built to be hidden as much as possible, implying the roof shouldn’t be visible above the vegetation. The house should be solar-powered, harvest rainwater and use natural construction materials as much as possible, helping blend into the surroundings to retain the feeling of living in the wild.
There is also a cap to the amount of land that can be used for construction, which is dependent on the size of one’s plot.
On the 15.2-acre plot, the construction zone is capped at 1.5 acres, while construction land on the whole 3,750-acre valley, subdivided into 30 unequal plots, is at one percent.
Others on sale are five-acre plots in Sangare Conservancy in Nyeri, which are going for $450,000 (Sh59.4 million ). Sangare Conservancy, a 4,250-acre land, is in the market looking to sell four house sites, with 11 already taken up.
Realtors reckon the conservation is attractive to wealthy investors who desire luxury while feeling they are contributing to environmental conservation and development of the communities hosting the conservancies.
“The investors obviously are looking for a project that is in the wild; they want a bush home and want to know the Kenyan wild as it were. But they also invest in it because of the work that is being done outside of the project – the work being done with the communities, conservation, wildlife – the 360-degree angle of the whole thing,” said Tarquin Gross, head of residential agency at Knight Frank, the realtors selling the plots.
Nanyuki is the latest front on a model made popular in the Maasai Mara region and dubbed Safari Estates. The 1,000-acre Enonkishu Conservancy hosts 40 five-acre plots under the Naretoi project.
Currently, there is a house on sale in Naretoi, Tumbili House, priced at $5.5 million (Sh715 million). The house is built two metres above ground, supported by stilts, ensuring it does not interfere with the vegetation on the ground or the movement of wild animals.
According to the Financial Times, the house is owned by a Briton who built his wealth in the advertising industry, underlining the appetite for such investments in the international market.
Most of those who take up the houses are international investors who do not have to live in the country, opening the window for the houses to be rented on a short-term basis.
“A lot of them are international investors who have busy lives in their own right wherever it is in the world, and they want this sort of haven to come to and get away from their busy life and actually feel like they are not only satisfying their own desires to get away from their busy lives but also with the desire to give back in whatever ways they can,” said Mr Gross.
“Some of them will live there full time. In Naretoi, there are a few people who live there, but a lot of them are not there full time – some of them rent out their properties on a short-term basis, and others don’t rent them out and will come for three months of the year,” he added.
In Lolldaiga Valley, the project is supporting schools in Umande and Muramati areas and restoring the forest habitat along the Sirimon River.
To execute the projects, the investors make annual contributions, which sources placed at $9,200 (Sh1.2 million ). The annual contribution is broken down into two parts, with one part covering service charges for items such as water, track and trail maintenance and security, while the second portion is a mandatory contribution to habitat restoration and community development projects.
Owners of Naretoi contribute $13,000 (Sh1.7 million ) in annual fees, with $6,000 (Sh780,000 ) being for community projects and the rest for service charges.
“Developing the estates makes them money to have the consistency to still remain a conservancy,” said Johnson Ndenge, a real estate consultant. “It also provides disparity in terms of claims of idle land – because you now do not have thousands of acres lying idle,” he added.
The plots at Naretoi have also proven that the investment is good for speculative investors. Seven years ago, the five-acre plots were on sale for between $250,000 and $400,000.
Recently, two plots that had come back to market had an asking price of $2.2 million, capturing the price escalation that accompanies the actualisation of the project.
