Mi Vida Homes Kenya: Samuel Kariuki on Building Green, Affordable and Mid-Market Housing in Nairobi

Samuel Kariuki, CEO of Mi Vida Homes Kenya, discusses how the company is redefining green, affordable, and mid-market housing in Nairobi. As one of the few institutional developers in Kenya, Mi Vida Homes, originally founded by Actis private equity, operates an innovative pre-sale housing model that enables capital-light growth and rapid project delivery. Its flagship Garden City development, a mixed-use master-planned project, showcases the firm’s expertise in developing apartments and residential units for Kenya’s growing urban population.

In the interview, Kariuki analyses Kenya’s real estate market, noting persistent housing deficits of over two million units, emerging sectors such as logistics centres and student housing, and new opportunities in real estate investment and capital markets in Kenya. He highlights Mi Vida’s management-led buyout, signalling a shift toward local ownership and institutional offtake models. Looking ahead, Mi Vida Homes aims to become Kenya’s most trusted institutional residential developer, scaling sustainable projects, maintaining steady unit handover, and ultimately achieving securities exchange listing, solidifying its role as a leader in sustainable real estate development in Africa.

Please give us an overview of the company, your scope of business, and your competitive advantage?

We are a green, affordable, and mid-market housing developer. We are one of the few institutional developers in the Kenyan market. The market is highly fragmented, with only a handful of what I would categorise as institutional developers. We were founded by a private equity firm, Actis, and are among the few institutional developers in the country.

As I mentioned, we are an institutional developer, and we develop for sale. We do not retain any of the assets we develop. In fact, I would say we sell before we develop. This makes our business model very asset-light and capital-light, as we acquire land through options without making upfront payments. Our pre-sale model enables us to fund most of our developments through customer deposits, and our capital structure does not allow us to hold any of the assets for rent. The concept is to enter a project, develop, exit, and then recycle the capital into new projects. It is, therefore, a high IRR play.

Could you clarify what kinds of units you build; studios, one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms?

We build a whole mix of units. Our ultimate target occupiers comprise the rental market in Nairobi. In that rental market the demand tends to be for studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms. These typically serve single individuals or very young families occupying two-bedroom units. We may include a few three-bedroom units, again for some families, but in the affordable housing segment the typical configuration is studio, one or two bedrooms.

Looking more broadly at the Kenyan real-estate market, could you give us your perspective on how the market looks today?

It has been a very dynamic market over the last twenty years. Around 2003 there was a change of Government and since then Kenya’s economy has changed significantly, both in size and structure. For context, Kenya’s GDP is probably ten-times bigger than it was twenty years ago and other aspects of the economy display much more sophistication. In that period the market has meant a lot of supply to address what had been a supply deficit in the years before.

The economy was stagnant then, there was a very limited supply of office space, logistics centres and residential units, which explains why we keep citing a residential deficit of up to two million units. The market is still catching up in some segments though not all. If I look segment by segment, in commercial office space there has been a lot of construction over the past twenty years and today it looks like a market that is oversupplied, especially in Nairobi. Logistics centres seem to be doing very well, especially grade-A logistics, which reflects a structural shift in the economy. A new emerging class is student housing. The percentage of the population below twenty years of age is significant; we have many students in our cities. The Government cannot keep up with public hostels development, and we are now seeing private-sector participation there.

Then of course there is residential, where I see a very significant cumulative deficit and that is one of the large opportunities today. So if I look at the general market today and where the pockets of opportunity are, I would say logistics and residential. As the economy digitises, digital-asset-linked logistics are emerging as a new asset class, again with good potential returns. But that broadly covers the space we are in.

Let us look at your flagship projects and those you are currently handling. What projects are you working on at the moment?

Our first flagship project was within the Garden City development. The Garden City development is a forty-seven-acre mixed-use project. When it was initiated by Actis, it was the first large-scale, master-planned, horizontal mixed-use development in the country. Within the forty-seven acres, we have a large retail centre, one of East Africa’s largest, which anchors the development. There is also a business park comprising commercial office spaces and residential components surrounding it.

Today, Mivida is the residential partner within the wider Garden City development. Every residential project within the development is undertaken by Mivida. Given the forty-seven-acre size, our potential pipeline within this precinct is up to three thousand residential units, at various stages of completion, construction, or concept.

Beyond Garden City, we have other sites with a similar pipeline size of approximately three thousand residential units. We are currently in an acquisition phase, identifying and securing suitable land in preferred locations. Once acquired, we follow a structured process of product development, market validation, and construction.

With the recent management-led buyout, what is your roadmap going forward?

The management buyout was a natural outcome of the platform’s development cycle. As I mentioned earlier, we were incubated by a private equity fund. By the very nature of such a fund, there comes a time when it must exit. The fact that the acquisition was led by management speaks to the confidence that the leadership team has in the business and the platform. It also reflects the growing maturity of our industry, as this is the first transaction of its kind, and I expect it will pave the way for more.

It is not an industry accustomed to many mergers, acquisitions, or capital market transactions. The ability to structure and mobilise local capital to exit global capital, and to transition such a platform into local ownership, demonstrates that the industry is evolving. For us, this transition provides flexibility under local ownership to take the platform to the next level.

The outgoing private equity fund spent the last seven years establishing the foundational pillars of governance, capital structure, systems, and processes, so we now have a well-governed institution comparable to regulated or listed businesses. Our goal is to build on that foundation, strengthen it, and take on more calculated risks in expanding the platform locally, given our deep understanding of the market.

Where do you see Mivida Homes in the next five years?

The fundamental identity of the business will remain unchanged. Mivida will continue to be a green, affordable, and mid-market housing developer. On an opportunistic basis, we may take on high-end residential projects, mainly targeting owner-occupiers or home buyers. However, at our core, we will remain an apartment builder serving buyers and renters.

The focus will be on scaling the platform in a structured manner. Strategically, we are also positioning ourselves to become more active within the capital markets. I see significant opportunities in that direction, and we look forward to pursuing them.

As an institutional home builder, what would you like to say to your partners and investors about the business?

For a residential developer focused on building for sale, the business model is relatively straightforward. It begins with securing land positions in attractive locations with strong rental demand. We then design and launch standardised products in those areas. Once the projects are launched, we pre-sell them, which requires a well-developed sales infrastructure.

After achieving a pre-sale threshold, we move into construction. This pre-sale validation is essential before proceeding. Over a twenty-four to thirty-six-month period, we manage customer relationships, ensuring delivery of the project while overseeing payment plans. That is the core structure of our business.

Looking ahead, the key evolution we foresee is in structuring institutional offtake. This could involve engaging directly with other institutions or developing our own funds to which we can exit projects under development. Those funds could then hold the completed assets for rental purposes. Fundamentally, the underlying demand remains for quality, affordable rental housing, and this approach aligns well with that reality.

How do you see your development in five years’ time? What do you hope to achieve as a company?

If we can sustain our target number of units completed and handed over to clients each year, and effectively remain the institutional business delivering the highest number of units annually, then we will have stayed true to our purpose. Achieving this requires long-term programmatic planning.

The nature of our business involves long lead times, as acquiring land, conceptualising projects, and developing them takes considerable time. The main challenge is ensuring consistency — avoiding cycles where we deliver many units one year, but then experience gaps in subsequent years due to a limited pipeline. Sustaining that steady delivery is critical.

Our goal is to build the most trusted brand in the market from a unit-handover perspective, whether the buyer is a retail or institutional client. A platform capable of consistently delivering several thousand units per year over the long term effectively transitions from a traditional real estate business into a consumer-facing enterprise. It becomes a business-to-consumer model, with some business-to-business elements, managing inventory and delivering it to the market predictably each year.

To answer your question directly, Jacques, our ambition is to become a business capable of being listed on the securities exchange.

Personally, what is your philosophy in life? What motivates you each morning to do what you do, beyond the professional challenges?

I am a mountain climber. In fact, I often say that my career is about climbing mountains, but when I am not climbing mountains, I do real estate. Mountain climbing carries its own underlying philosophies. It is about resilience.

Climbing a mountain is a reflection of life itself. Life is about overcoming hurdles, facing moments of exhaustion when the summit feels unreachable, yet choosing to keep going. Despite the dangers and fatigue, it is about the persistence to continue. The same principle applies to both personal life and business. There will always be challenges, and sometimes when you feel you have reached the summit, you realise there are still more hills ahead. The key is to keep moving forward. That is my philosophy.