Kenyans have found a new way to avoid paying real estate agents to find houses as they seek means to make every saving count.
House hunting in Nairobi is often a mountainous task. You either have to dig deep into your pockets or you walk until your heels scream.
But like any other sector, Kenyans are finding a way to create community benefits, banding together to make house hunting easier.
Kenyans are now using Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram to convert the audacious job of simply visiting the group, finding a house they like, and visiting to view the house.
This has rendered the jobs of real estate agents meaningless in the cases of middle-income Kenyans seeking to move.
A review of the main WhatsApp group under the name ‘Keja Hunters’ by Kenyans.co.ke has revealed that people in these groups have opted to share houses they are about to move from to allow others seeking rental houses in that area to find them without any middlemen.
Furthermore, when one person visits a promising house and realises it does not suit their needs or desires, they share pictures of the house for the rest to check out.
The practice in this group also includes landlords who are sharing rental houses that are empty.
This has completely removed middlemen who help people hunt for houses for a fee. Depending on the area, Kenyans typically pay between Ksh2,000 and Ksh3,000 to the agents who refer you to a house in an area and location you specify.
For years this was a booming business since the agents also charged landlords to direct any prospective tenants to their houses. However, many are now finding work hard to come by.
The group has a community of 54 others that cover various estates within the capital. You can find estates like South B and South C, Karen, Rongai, Fedha, Syokimau, Kitengela, Kasarani, Umoja and Kahawa Sukari, Kahawa West, and Wendani.
The groups that are increasingly creating and making it easier to house hurt don’t come without risks. Like many other technology-based ideas, it is easy to fall prey to scammers.
That notwithstanding, the banding together has made house hunting almost like crowdsourcing, where it becomes the duty of everyone to help a needy person find a house.
