SE9
August 6th, 2009, 02:57 PM
Kenya courts a new clientele
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/70b2e8a4-7720-11de-b23c-00144feabdc0.html
July 25th 2009
http://media.ft.com/cms/48b7ee40-7733-11de-b23c-00144feabdc0.jpg
The fashionable village of Shela on Lamu
With its well-run game parks and white sand beaches, Kenya, in east Africa, has long been a popular destination for well-to-do European holidaymakers. Luxury property purchases were not always on the agenda but, following a push by the Kenyan government to court upscale development and an increase in the number of flights from Europe to Nairobi, that appears to be changing, especially on the stretch of Indian Ocean coast from Malindi to Watamu.
Past the mid-market resorts that have dominated the area since the 1980s, there are now several high-end housing options, drawing a diverse group of buyers from Kenyan politicians to international names, such as former Formula 1 racing driver Gianni Morbidelli. One can still find one-bedroom apartments and two-bedroom houses in gated beachfront communities starting at about Ks12.5m (£100,000) and Ks22.5m, respectively. But there are also multi-million-pound villas and a clutch of new, more expensive resorts.
Sonia Irvine, sister of another former F1 driver, Eddie Irvine, and owner of the Amber Lounge events company linked to the F1 season, recently bought a four-bedroom villa at Medina Palms, a new group of 50 residences on six acres at the end of the mile-wide strip between the ocean and Mida Creek that is Watamu.
“I first discovered [the area] a couple of years ago; it’s a lovely resort with a stunning beach and has beautiful blue-green waters,” she says. Her development offers Arab-inspired architecture and eco-initiatives including solar-heated water, low-energy lighting and a turtle-watch programme. “I’ve bought a great plot of land with amazing views”, she adds. I plan to visit in the holiday season and friends and family will use the place too.”
Prices range from Ks22m for a large two-bedroom, 141 sq metre apartment to Ks181m for a six-bedroom, 938 sq metre beachfront villa.
Britons Nigel and Lesley-Anne Rowley, the developers of Medina Palms, live nearby in a four-bedroom property called Dhow House, which they designed and built themselves. This is another increasingly common phenomenon in Watamu, as foreigners purchase older colonial-style properties built in the 1960s, demolish them and build on the site.
As a result, prices on beachfront land have increased five-fold in the past decade. Yet they remain relatively reasonable. Discoverwatamu.com lists a two-acre plot with a small main house plus guest residence and large pool located 400 metres from the main beach at Watamu Marine Park for Ks24m, as well as a four-bedroom house overlooking Mida Creek for Ks116m.
At the recently completed Amani, a four-bedroom house that sold off-plan for Ks43m in late 2007 is now being offered for Ks86m, while the hotel-linked Turtle Bay Resort has 25 apartments with off-plan prices starting at Ks23m. “For many of our hotel guests, owning a property here is an extension of their holiday dreams,” says Turtle Bay general manager Damian Davies.
Local agent Ivor Engel confirms the demand. “There’s a genuine 42-week rental season locally; at Christmas and New Year and the main summer, Easter and half-term holidays, Watamu is so busy people book a year in advance,” he says. “There are [also] many embassy and [non-governmental organisation] workers in the region, who are keen renters, and the local market – from Nairobi, Tanzania and South Africa – is strong.” As a result, more are buying property and “prices have been rising 20 per cent a year for the past five years [with] little sign of a slowdown.”
The area is helped by an airport, located halfway to Malindi; good sanitation and electricity supply and friendly locals.
Beautiful as its coast is, Kenya is not without its troubles. Civil unrest flared in early 2008 – although not specifically in the Watamu/Malindi area – and while the formation of a coalition government has restored peace, tourism has suffered, with visitor numbers dropping from more than 1m in 2007 to about 730,000 last year. But the government has responded with an economic development plan, Kenya Vision 2030, that calls for high-quality development in both coastal and interior regions.
Giovanni Parazzi, a former Nairobi advertising executive who has lived in Watamu for the past 20 years, argues that the latest projects in the area could be the way forward for the rest of the country. “There’s a lot of pressure from new development that the infrastructure and environment can’t support [so] what we need is more high-quality eco-projects like Medina Palms raising the bar,” he says.
Rowley says she’s happy for her development to serve as an example. “We are doing all we can to ensure we develop responsibly, with great awareness of the need to tread lightly in what is a beautiful part of the world.”
. . .
Lamu, a tiny island off the north Kenyan coast, is known for its remote location and low-key, laid-back atmosphere. New development is rare and residents still get around by donkey or on foot.
Yet the island cannot seem to avoid the celebrity spotlight. It featured in Barack Obama’s second memoir, The Audacity of Hope; Princess Caroline of Monaco has three homes there; and it has recently been cited as the holiday destination of choice for stars such as singer Sting, artist Tracy Emin and actor Ewan McGregor. Has the island environment fallen victim to the buzz? Hardly.
“I first came to Lamu when I was 11 and I remember being captivated by the bright kanga and kikoy cloth, walking along the miles of empty and unspoilt white beach collecting shells with my mother and dodging donkeys in town,” says Caroline Pulver, a financial market development consultant based in Nairobi. Today, “the waterfront and main street are busier [but] nothing else has changed and I don’t think it will. You can’t drive a car down a street that is only as wide as a donkey.”
Andrew McGhie, 42, a Londoner who moved to Lamu six years ago, agrees. “Credit-crunch Britain or America don’t figure on Lamu’s radar, unless it’s that people are coming to escape it,” he says. “It’s a world away, a complete antidote to stress and being busy.”
A former publisher, McGhie moved to the island to write a book about historical figures who had fled there, including the late 19th-century Freelanders, Europeans who sought to create a socialist utopia but descended into debauchery, disaster and death, and Latham Leslie Moore, thought to be the illegitimate son of King Edward VII and grandson of Queen Victoria, who ended his days in a Lamu beach hut.
But McGhie soon found himself distracted by property, especially the distinctive Swahili Arab architecture in Lamu Town, which blends Arabian, Indian, Persian, African and colonial European influences. After buying and renovating his own traditional townhouse – which had a title deed dating back to 1918 – he founded Lamu Island Property, which specialises in selling and restoring similar houses, with help from local artisans.
“Building here is sometimes maddening but it is very rewarding to find an ancient near-ruin and restore it to how it might have appeared during Lamu’s golden age several hundred years ago,” McGhie says. “Lamu Town is the oldest existing Indian Ocean trading port [and while] other towns along the coast, from Somalia down to Mozambique, have either fallen apart or been modernised, Lamu has stayed intact. It has exactly the same layout and buildings as 500 years ago. People often say [it] reminds them of quieter parts of old Marrakech or Islamic Cairo. The feel is much more Arabic or Moorish than African – an interesting, ramshackle place of donkeys and drains, with buildings that look unadorned from the outside but lead inside to carved plasterwork, rich fabrics, painted beams and ornate decoration.”
Property prices in Lamu Town range from Ks4.2m (£33,000) for a place in need of repairs that would cost a similar amount to Ks23.6m for a restored Swahili townhouse.
More expensive is Shela, a fashionable melting pot of a village, where the Peugeot car family owns a large residence on the harbour. Here, a restored historic house will cost about Ks52.5m and the early 19th-century mansion built for the Caliph of Zanzibar is on sale for Ks78.7m through Lamu Island Property. “In Shela you find some of the most in-demand real estate in Africa, with properties costing more than Ks315m,” McGhie says.
Britons Leslie Duckworth and her husband, David Campbell, started their small property business in Shela nearly 30 years ago, restoring old houses. But they have since moved on to “the empty beaches” of Kizingoni, where they recently finished a new eight-home, 24-acre development. It includes the four-bedroom Pepo – with private beach access, a wrap-around dining terrace and a separate guesthouse – on sale for Ks78m and the six-bedroom Kazkazi, comprised of four towers set around an elevated infinity pool in large landscaped gardens and priced at Ks147m. All the properties are powered by wind and solar energy, constructed with local materials (including coral-block walls and mangrove and mangati roof beams) and furnished with accessories made in Lamu Town.
“Our clients are typically American, British, Irish, German and French, mainly wanting second homes in the sun that they rent out when they are not there, though one couple live [at Kizingoni] permanently,” says Duckworth.
An additional option for househunters is Manda, another of the seven land masses in the Lamu archipelago, five minutes away from the main island by speedboat. With an airport and a new desalination plant to provide fresh water, it is gaining favour, says Briton Rachael Feiler, who moved to Lamu five years ago to build and run the eco-village Diamond Beach with her mother, Helen. “Much of the beachfront has been bought up by wealthy Europeans ... and prices have shot up quickly,” she says.
They start at about Ks12m for one acre of land, while a luxurious three-bedroom villa on the beach will cost about Ks78.7m. Of course more modest accommodation is available too. “My mum and I live in mud houses with two rooms, a bathroom and a bougainvillea-covered terrace where we relax,” Feiler says.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/70b2e8a4-7720-11de-b23c-00144feabdc0.html
July 25th 2009
http://media.ft.com/cms/48b7ee40-7733-11de-b23c-00144feabdc0.jpg
The fashionable village of Shela on Lamu
With its well-run game parks and white sand beaches, Kenya, in east Africa, has long been a popular destination for well-to-do European holidaymakers. Luxury property purchases were not always on the agenda but, following a push by the Kenyan government to court upscale development and an increase in the number of flights from Europe to Nairobi, that appears to be changing, especially on the stretch of Indian Ocean coast from Malindi to Watamu.
Past the mid-market resorts that have dominated the area since the 1980s, there are now several high-end housing options, drawing a diverse group of buyers from Kenyan politicians to international names, such as former Formula 1 racing driver Gianni Morbidelli. One can still find one-bedroom apartments and two-bedroom houses in gated beachfront communities starting at about Ks12.5m (£100,000) and Ks22.5m, respectively. But there are also multi-million-pound villas and a clutch of new, more expensive resorts.
Sonia Irvine, sister of another former F1 driver, Eddie Irvine, and owner of the Amber Lounge events company linked to the F1 season, recently bought a four-bedroom villa at Medina Palms, a new group of 50 residences on six acres at the end of the mile-wide strip between the ocean and Mida Creek that is Watamu.
“I first discovered [the area] a couple of years ago; it’s a lovely resort with a stunning beach and has beautiful blue-green waters,” she says. Her development offers Arab-inspired architecture and eco-initiatives including solar-heated water, low-energy lighting and a turtle-watch programme. “I’ve bought a great plot of land with amazing views”, she adds. I plan to visit in the holiday season and friends and family will use the place too.”
Prices range from Ks22m for a large two-bedroom, 141 sq metre apartment to Ks181m for a six-bedroom, 938 sq metre beachfront villa.
Britons Nigel and Lesley-Anne Rowley, the developers of Medina Palms, live nearby in a four-bedroom property called Dhow House, which they designed and built themselves. This is another increasingly common phenomenon in Watamu, as foreigners purchase older colonial-style properties built in the 1960s, demolish them and build on the site.
As a result, prices on beachfront land have increased five-fold in the past decade. Yet they remain relatively reasonable. Discoverwatamu.com lists a two-acre plot with a small main house plus guest residence and large pool located 400 metres from the main beach at Watamu Marine Park for Ks24m, as well as a four-bedroom house overlooking Mida Creek for Ks116m.
At the recently completed Amani, a four-bedroom house that sold off-plan for Ks43m in late 2007 is now being offered for Ks86m, while the hotel-linked Turtle Bay Resort has 25 apartments with off-plan prices starting at Ks23m. “For many of our hotel guests, owning a property here is an extension of their holiday dreams,” says Turtle Bay general manager Damian Davies.
Local agent Ivor Engel confirms the demand. “There’s a genuine 42-week rental season locally; at Christmas and New Year and the main summer, Easter and half-term holidays, Watamu is so busy people book a year in advance,” he says. “There are [also] many embassy and [non-governmental organisation] workers in the region, who are keen renters, and the local market – from Nairobi, Tanzania and South Africa – is strong.” As a result, more are buying property and “prices have been rising 20 per cent a year for the past five years [with] little sign of a slowdown.”
The area is helped by an airport, located halfway to Malindi; good sanitation and electricity supply and friendly locals.
Beautiful as its coast is, Kenya is not without its troubles. Civil unrest flared in early 2008 – although not specifically in the Watamu/Malindi area – and while the formation of a coalition government has restored peace, tourism has suffered, with visitor numbers dropping from more than 1m in 2007 to about 730,000 last year. But the government has responded with an economic development plan, Kenya Vision 2030, that calls for high-quality development in both coastal and interior regions.
Giovanni Parazzi, a former Nairobi advertising executive who has lived in Watamu for the past 20 years, argues that the latest projects in the area could be the way forward for the rest of the country. “There’s a lot of pressure from new development that the infrastructure and environment can’t support [so] what we need is more high-quality eco-projects like Medina Palms raising the bar,” he says.
Rowley says she’s happy for her development to serve as an example. “We are doing all we can to ensure we develop responsibly, with great awareness of the need to tread lightly in what is a beautiful part of the world.”
. . .
Lamu, a tiny island off the north Kenyan coast, is known for its remote location and low-key, laid-back atmosphere. New development is rare and residents still get around by donkey or on foot.
Yet the island cannot seem to avoid the celebrity spotlight. It featured in Barack Obama’s second memoir, The Audacity of Hope; Princess Caroline of Monaco has three homes there; and it has recently been cited as the holiday destination of choice for stars such as singer Sting, artist Tracy Emin and actor Ewan McGregor. Has the island environment fallen victim to the buzz? Hardly.
“I first came to Lamu when I was 11 and I remember being captivated by the bright kanga and kikoy cloth, walking along the miles of empty and unspoilt white beach collecting shells with my mother and dodging donkeys in town,” says Caroline Pulver, a financial market development consultant based in Nairobi. Today, “the waterfront and main street are busier [but] nothing else has changed and I don’t think it will. You can’t drive a car down a street that is only as wide as a donkey.”
Andrew McGhie, 42, a Londoner who moved to Lamu six years ago, agrees. “Credit-crunch Britain or America don’t figure on Lamu’s radar, unless it’s that people are coming to escape it,” he says. “It’s a world away, a complete antidote to stress and being busy.”
A former publisher, McGhie moved to the island to write a book about historical figures who had fled there, including the late 19th-century Freelanders, Europeans who sought to create a socialist utopia but descended into debauchery, disaster and death, and Latham Leslie Moore, thought to be the illegitimate son of King Edward VII and grandson of Queen Victoria, who ended his days in a Lamu beach hut.
But McGhie soon found himself distracted by property, especially the distinctive Swahili Arab architecture in Lamu Town, which blends Arabian, Indian, Persian, African and colonial European influences. After buying and renovating his own traditional townhouse – which had a title deed dating back to 1918 – he founded Lamu Island Property, which specialises in selling and restoring similar houses, with help from local artisans.
“Building here is sometimes maddening but it is very rewarding to find an ancient near-ruin and restore it to how it might have appeared during Lamu’s golden age several hundred years ago,” McGhie says. “Lamu Town is the oldest existing Indian Ocean trading port [and while] other towns along the coast, from Somalia down to Mozambique, have either fallen apart or been modernised, Lamu has stayed intact. It has exactly the same layout and buildings as 500 years ago. People often say [it] reminds them of quieter parts of old Marrakech or Islamic Cairo. The feel is much more Arabic or Moorish than African – an interesting, ramshackle place of donkeys and drains, with buildings that look unadorned from the outside but lead inside to carved plasterwork, rich fabrics, painted beams and ornate decoration.”
Property prices in Lamu Town range from Ks4.2m (£33,000) for a place in need of repairs that would cost a similar amount to Ks23.6m for a restored Swahili townhouse.
More expensive is Shela, a fashionable melting pot of a village, where the Peugeot car family owns a large residence on the harbour. Here, a restored historic house will cost about Ks52.5m and the early 19th-century mansion built for the Caliph of Zanzibar is on sale for Ks78.7m through Lamu Island Property. “In Shela you find some of the most in-demand real estate in Africa, with properties costing more than Ks315m,” McGhie says.
Britons Leslie Duckworth and her husband, David Campbell, started their small property business in Shela nearly 30 years ago, restoring old houses. But they have since moved on to “the empty beaches” of Kizingoni, where they recently finished a new eight-home, 24-acre development. It includes the four-bedroom Pepo – with private beach access, a wrap-around dining terrace and a separate guesthouse – on sale for Ks78m and the six-bedroom Kazkazi, comprised of four towers set around an elevated infinity pool in large landscaped gardens and priced at Ks147m. All the properties are powered by wind and solar energy, constructed with local materials (including coral-block walls and mangrove and mangati roof beams) and furnished with accessories made in Lamu Town.
“Our clients are typically American, British, Irish, German and French, mainly wanting second homes in the sun that they rent out when they are not there, though one couple live [at Kizingoni] permanently,” says Duckworth.
An additional option for househunters is Manda, another of the seven land masses in the Lamu archipelago, five minutes away from the main island by speedboat. With an airport and a new desalination plant to provide fresh water, it is gaining favour, says Briton Rachael Feiler, who moved to Lamu five years ago to build and run the eco-village Diamond Beach with her mother, Helen. “Much of the beachfront has been bought up by wealthy Europeans ... and prices have shot up quickly,” she says.
They start at about Ks12m for one acre of land, while a luxurious three-bedroom villa on the beach will cost about Ks78.7m. Of course more modest accommodation is available too. “My mum and I live in mud houses with two rooms, a bathroom and a bougainvillea-covered terrace where we relax,” Feiler says.