Dunia kuna watu pessimist kweli kaka!

This discussion is usually very vague. In my opinion, what matters are individual deals presented to an investor and which are within his/her budget. If I have one million, I have two deals, to buy a 50*100 in Thika, or to buy KCB shares. In such a case, you will have to examine the true value of KCB shares and whether you are getting a discount/overpaying for the shares. You will also have to check whether the land in that area costs roughly the same, and whether you are getting any value for money e.g the rental cost of a one bedroom unit in the area where the land is. Therefore, this discussion will never end and at any one time, a smart investor will carefully examine individual deals. KCB is a bad deal if you buy at 60bob, and land is a bad deal if you buy it in a remote and uninhabited location for 1 million. Therefore, in order to make a decision, you must have a fairly accurate valuation of the stock, and the property. Then you can check which one is being offered at a greater discount and choose it. NB: The better investment (between shares and real estate) is the one that is being offered at the greatest discount from its true value.

Innovation is the best investment

Lets take a hypothetical situation of two different Kenyan employees earning a net salary of 70k each with a wife and one child in kindergarten..

Employee AB - a long suffering Kenyan in his mid-thirties aspires to one day own a home. He is more biased towards the buy-a-plot-and-build-own-house route.He has shopped around and can only find plots priced at 1.5 million(50X100). He has not enough savings to pay for the plot cash and hence has no otherwise other than take a loan. He reckons he can pay-off the loan in 60 months(kshs. 25000 plus interest).Once done paying this loan, he will take another one to build the house and hence in the next 10 years this man will have a house but with little liquidity(cash and other liquid assets e.g., stocks).


On the other hand, Employee BA - another weathered and battered Kenyan in his mid thirties buys Kenya power shares worth ksh. 25,000 every month for 60 months without fail. Assuming Kenya power shares never go up and remain at the current price of 4 bob in the next 5 years, employee BA will have accumulated 375,000 shares with a paper value of 1.5 million. If say after the 5 years Kenya power resumes paying its 0.5 cents dividend employee BA will be making a cool ksh. 187,500 per year or ksh. 15625 per month. If this is re-invested in the same Kenya power shares(assuming they remain at 4 bob) he would have accumulated a cool 975,000 kenya power shares(value = 975000 * 4 = 3900000) in 10 years. If the market one day irrationally or rationally decides to value Kenya power shares to an amount equal to today(Jan 2019) book value then you can guess who will be laughing all the way to the bank....

However, if the stories we are hearing from the "1 million invested near Nairobi 10 years ago thread..." happened 10 years from now, then Employee AB will also be a happy man.

So, the thrifty Mugundaman a.k.a LosAngeles-254 awachane na sisi watu wa kununua mbuzi(stocks) alafu baadaye zikizaana tutanunua ng'ombe(real estate). As he(Mugundaman alias LosAngeles) correctly states, most of us are employed by tightwad wahindis and can only buy real estate through loans which means that in all our working lives we might end up with one buloti with a poorly built house.