The name doesn't really matter. A cow by any other name is a cow.

From my lil' experience, land has given better returns than shares.
Buying & selling land is lucrative if you get it right and it's sustainable. People will always need some place to build.
Majority of those who burn their fingers,buy and sell PLOTS(1/8 Eighth to be specific). In buying & selling PLOTS,not much to be made.
Majority of the Kenyans will struggle to buy land (1 acre & above) costing above 1.5 million,but they'll afford plots selling at about 400k(for example).
If you go to some of those places selling plots (1/8) at 500k, and ask how much an acre or more is selling at. You will be surprised to learn that an acre will cost you less than 2.5 million. If you subdivide into 8 plots & sell at 500k, how much do you get?
If you wait for one year,the returns will definitely be better.

The trick is buying large piece and subdividing in to 1/8 plots.
Otherwise buying 1/8s & selling 1/8s is a tough call.

@MugundaMan. You seem to be a man of experience . or perhaps just a charade. So, let's see: From your experience, accounting for legal fees, statutory charges, and brokerage / advertising fees, if you use that to speed up a sale, how many years would it take for a 1.5M plot in Kitengela to double its price? Are those who bought 1.5M plots in kitengela in 2012 selling them now at 3M, six years later?

Ukijibu hapo, do not forget your own advice about supply and demand. Unless you also think that demand for land is price inelastic. My point, the more expensive the land gets, the more difficult it is for it to double its value. If you account for legal fees, na hizo charges zingine, and find that it takes kama 7 years to double the total cost, you are better off in M-Akiba's and the other treasury stuff that have a return of at least 10% (after accounting for the 15% withholding tax on some of them). I do not see any sense taking risk to earn a return that I would earn risk free.

Who has a Map of how the road will connect. Hii maneno ingine yoote ni shida ya @ Alma1

@Cv254K & @mkeiy (what a name),

The problem with fellows like you is that you just love to "hear yourselves talking" even when what you are saying is not adding up and/or involves a swarm of contradictions.

1. In your estimation, you only see someone buying a 1/8th to sell a 1/8th 5 years later, as if that is the end all and be all of real estate. Very funny! What do you think we are buying migundas for? To sit back and twiddle our thumbs on?

2. Even so, running with your line of thinking, what was the price of 1/4 (or an 1/8th) an acre in Kitengela in 2012. Take your pick of any of the most well known estates there; Milimani, New Valley, Muigai, etc etc. Then tell us what the price of 1/4 (or an 1/8th) acre is there today. Please compare like with like, and I hope you will not use the super-bogus figures in the article by the real estate book hawker! As an aside, the old joke goes that those who do not succeed at doing, teach (books, in universities etc) but that is a story for another day.

3. Ati treasuries earning 10-12% beats Kenyan real estate in returns . How now and on what planet?

4. I thank you for agreeing with us that buying and subdividing is also a lucrative sector in the game. Not only that, but also both the original investor who buys and subdivides and the plot buyer benefit big time and here's how;

Buying and subdividing requires a way higher initial investment; in the tens of millions of shillings in most cases. Take for example what companies like Username and many others are doing. They have to scout for large parcels of land (sometimes 100 acres plus) and no matter how cheaply it is bought from the original owner, they have to invest in paying stamp duties, grading the roads to the parcel (a government function), fencing the land, clearing and leveling it, grading and murraming the internal roads, wading through the bureaucracy of getting a surveyor to subdivide hundreds of plots & title them, pulling stima & drilling a borehole in many cases, paying for advertisement (tv, radio, print, billboards), paying for swarms of support staff, financing weekly site visits, paying all client fees (title processing, stamp duty etc) and of course making a small profit for themselves, in order to deliver to the client a neatly packaged hassle-free 1/8th with its own title deed that is ready to develop and at an affordable price that fits their pocket. No stamp duty to pay, nor hassles of chasing title at the registries/lands offices, no need to do anything except due diligence and pay for your plot and wait for title! Delivering that value proposition to a client is not child's beans my friend!

Imagine if you could buy an acre in the middle of nowhere from the original owner. You could perhaps get it at the same price a land company or sacco is selling an 1/8th for in the same area, but with zero added services! First of all how would you access your land if the roads there are not graded? Second, you do not know who your future neighbours will be. A terrible slum could mushroom right next to your plot and your investment remains doomed well into the forseeable future. At least with the buy and subdivide model, a relatively well planned estate emerges and the buyers are mostly the middle class who can afford 200-800k (or more) for an 1/8th depending on location. So you can reasonably anticipate that they will not build mabati shacks next to you. Not only that, I put it to you that development will come to that area faster than it would to your solo acre.

All it takes is for one or two out of the hundreds of plot owners to start developing and there is a snowball effect. Government is also more apt to provide services when there is a community of 100+ plot owners lobbying for the same. On the other hand, you living in your 1 acre in the middle of nowhere might be listening to crickets chirping for quite a very long time before anything of substance happens there, even though your land will still appreciate in value with time. Pulling electricity and drilling your own borehole there by yourself will be an uphill task. Bottom line, in case you missed the memo, housing developments in the 'bedrooms of Nairobi' and way beyond are increasingly becoming Sacco and / or Land company driven.

5. In fact I think the plot buyer is way more advantaged than the subdivider in the very long term. Just like in the stock market, the long termer who waits 10,20 or even 30 years for the full realisation of the potential of a solid company always does better than the churner who buys and sells daily. Most of the cap gains (and annual dividends benefits as he waits) are his. Let me give you an example. In the 80's, a lot of developers bought large parcels of land, subdivided, then built and sold maisonettes that were going for as little as 800k (or less!) in many of the existing middle class estates in Nairobi. Those maisonettes are going for 15, 20, 30m or more as we speak! Who realised more value based on the amount invested? The developer who made a very decent killing putting down his money, talent and effort to do all the grunt work to deliver a hassle free house that one has to just pick up the keys for, or the original home buyer in the 80's who simply bought and held?

6. Thank you for also agreeing with us on the Counties being new nodes of real estate opportunity. Heck, as I said, the whole of Kenya is one big opportunity, brother.

7. Real estate is not for everybody, as that author with the funny hesabu proved in his responses in the article provided above (The ABCs of investing). It requires some basic love and talent for it that many simply do not have. Whining all day about how bad it is on Wazoo may help kill some good time in the office for some, but does not invalidate the fact that fortunes have been made and continue to be made in a sector that is one of the pillars of not just the Kenyan economy but any economy on earth.

8. As you already know, land is a basic factor of production, and apart from reclamation, it is not a renewable resource. With a growing population, the long term trend of land is therefore always up all things held equal. For you to buy your 10% treasuries, you have to have a place to sleep on and wake up from daily. CBK who sells you those treasuries must also sit on some land before anything else moves.

Bottom line, kila nyani na starehe zake but for the young, wise person, real estate, properly invested in, at the right price, is an asset class that simply cannot be ignored in Kenya today unless one wants to bury their heads in the sand with a jillion empty excuses ignoring the stark reality that they can see before their very eyes.

A 100% simple return in 7 years is equal to about 10% annualized return. Hence the reason I was asking you how long it has taken to double the value of your investment in "speculative" land. As long as the government continues its debt binge, it will continue paying high rates, making any other investments one holds less lucrative.

Anyway, I saw you recommended Isiolo as one of the next frontiers. Do you have the LAPSSET map for Isiolo? I know that near Isiolo Town/ airport, many Meru and Borana politicians have taken "positions" and you will likely meet their proxies in county land boards, especially if buying sthg "large". I do not have the actual map so I do not know where it passes in lower parts of Isiolo. If the map shows that it passes via / near Garbatula, as is the word on the ground, I hope you will not be sold the national park or the adjacent large unoccupied swathes of land that are usually a source of conflict between Meru/Borana/Somali due to grazing/water conflict and some little matters of "nywele ngumu". You will find it hard to take possession, even with ownership. That's all I can say as part of my 'giving back' to wazua republic.