A priority country, Reall has been operating in Kenya since 1991 and pursuing a more commercial strategy since 2005.

Kenya has a housing deficit of over 2m homes, which increases by around 200,000 per annum. There are 50,000 new houses being constructed annually, but this fails to have a significant impact on demand. An estimated 61% of Kenya’s 50m residents live in slums, and over 90% of Kenya’s urban households are rental properties. Credit is mostly unavailable to the vast majority due to informal sources of income. However, in 2017 the Kenyan president announced affordable housing as one of their “Big Four” agendas, and committed to constructing 500,000 homes by 2022.

The majority of Reall’s work in Kenya has taken place in partnership with the National Cooperative Housing Union (NACHU). Through this partnership, NACHU have constructed over 1,500 homes. NACHU has also successfully engaged with the national and regional governments, helping to shape the current housing policy to consider people on low incomes, and have been an active member in government task forces on land, housing and the built environment.

An exciting pipeline of new partnerships and collaborations is being developed, focused on commercial low-income housing developers, and negotiations with government-backed mortgage providers and commercial banks on end-user finance.