Kenya's super-rich turn to conservancy plots as safari estates spread
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Wealthy buyers are paying tens of millions of shillings for plots of up to 233 acres inside Kenyan wildlife conservancies, where strict building rules are written into 99-year leases.
As most buyers scramble for 100 feet by 50 feet plots in Nairobi and its environs, a different market is emerging among the super-rich: plots of up to 233 acres inside wildlife conservancies, sold with strict building rules intended to keep the landscape wild.
Lolldaiga Conservancy in Nanyuki is the latest to join the foray, with 11 plots for sale in Lolldaiga Valley. The smallest, Forest Lugga East at 15.2 acres, is going for $395,000 (Sh51 million), while the largest, Big Glade, covers 233 acres and is marketed on its views of Mount Kenya. Distances are given in flight time, with the valley about 45 minutes from Nairobi by air.
Buyers take 99-year leases and must follow management rules designed to limit interference with the habitat. Houses must be hidden as much as possible so that roofs are not visible above the vegetation, and must be solar-powered, harvest rainwater and use natural construction materials. Construction is capped at 1.5 acres on the 15.2-acre plot, while building on the whole 3,750-acre valley, subdivided into 30 unequal plots, is limited to one per cent of the land.
Five-acre plots in Sangare Conservancy in Nyeri are going for $450,000 (Sh59.4 million). The 4,250-acre conservancy is selling four house sites, with 11 already taken up, according to the report.
"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," said Tarquin Gross, head of residential agency at Knight Frank, the realtors selling the Lolldaiga plots.
Nanyuki is the latest front on a model made popular in the Maasai Mara and dubbed Safari Estates. The 1,000-acre Enonkishu Conservancy hosts 40 five-acre plots under the Naretoi project, where a house named Tumbili House is on sale at $5.5 million (Sh715 million), built two metres above ground on stilts so it does not interfere with vegetation or animal movement.
Most buyers are international investors who do not live in Kenya full time, opening the window for the houses to be let on a short-term basis. Gross said such buyers want a haven from busy lives while contributing to conservation and host communities.