By Dennis Ayemba
Emm Consult Limited is a real estate company fully registered in Kenya as a limited company. The firm is involved in property valuation, property management, facilities management, estate agency, and feasibility studies.
According to Mr. Eric Madete the Managing Director, the firm was established with an interest to create a difference in the market by providing what property owners want; which is making sure that they are able to get dividends from their investments.
The firm has many clients who are either Kenyan, Non-Kenyan; residents and none-residents. “We pride ourselves in the provision of proper property management services which is a challenge to many land and property owners,” said Mr. Madete.
“The challenge a lot of property owners have is that they do not have the time to manage their properties, or the knowledge on how to go about it and so a lot of them end up losing in the process of trying to get their investments to give them dividends. That is where we come in; we give a lot of advice on property management, rental collection, lease management, property maintenance, and the necessary support services especially in the case of multi-dwelling units,” he said. “It is a big challenge in this country to develop a property and maintain it for it to stay in good condition,” he added.
EMM Consult strives to meet the need of the client. “We do not treat a client just like any other number that comes for our services; we try to provide our best by ensuring that if it a property we are managing on the client’s behalf we give him more than just collecting rent. We offer advice, we visit the property all these to ensure that the client is less stressed in terms of managing the property. We can proudly say that we have made a niche in terms of being able to fully satisfy the needs of the client,” asserted Mr. Madete.
The firm has a database of satisfied clients which include: Honeydew Investments Limited, Cumberland Investment Limited and Subrian Wines Merchant. They have also successfully done property management and letting for various commercial properties like: Hazina Towers, View Park Towers, Maendeleo house, The Bazaar, Savannah Center Embakasi and Lyric house.
The managing director insists that, there are many challenges in the real estate industry. Starting with the market itself, there are numerous people who are not professionals that have infiltrated the market and are misadvising property owners either on pricing or maintenance schedules. These people have distorted the market situation whereby nobody seems to have trust in the profession. “For instance if you are trying to get business from a person who is a resident outside the country, the client wants to be very sure he is dealing with a genuine person.
Documentation and qualifications are not enough anymore, he wants to dig deeper to make sure you are genuine. In the process, you lose some clients because they have not reached that point of believing that anybody in the market will provide good services for them,” he explained.
Moreover, he added that the economic situation has currently slowed down quite a lot derailing the growth of the real estate market. “Sales are quite low and banks are complaining that the interest rates caps are a negative issue. Originally we thought capping of interest rates was going to be a positive thing because people would afford houses but we realized that financial institutions are now reluctant in giving credits,” he said. “We hope that will be soon resolved so that we do not have banks withholding lending,” he added.
“The promulgation of the new constitution brought about the formulation of the National Land Commission (NLC) with its devolved units, but we are seeing a big challenge in that there has been change; in that its devolved units have been done with. So the NLC is more or less being rendered ceremonial because now they cannot exercise the functions that were originally envisaged when the national land bill was being drafted and it is really affecting the real estate market because now people are not so sure about it now.
Title deeds are not reliable anymore. Even when it comes to our professional bit of doing valuations we find ourselves more challenged because then you are not so sure if the advice you are giving shall stand the test of time. For instance we do evaluations for banks and the bank would want to take our report as the truth and would rely on it to lend but it is becoming a challenge because now we cannot be sure about those title deeds,” said Mr. Madete.
The managing director is of the opinion that, stricter regulations are needed when dealing with quacks especially in the case of professional bodies, to make sure that only professionals are operating in the market.
He also urges the government to consider the real estate sector as a major investment avenue that people have put in money; hence the risk involved should be as minimal as possible. Most importantly, he insists that the land registries need to be streamlined so that things are done in a systematic manner.
“Kenyans shy away from engaging professionals because of cost but again I would say it is a dangerous thing to look for a cheaper option because cheap ends up being expensive. The use of professionals is very crucial in this country that is why I insist if you want anything to do with real estate get advice from the experts,” he concluded.
