Misty Springs, Westlands: a 23 storey tower, a doubled furnished rate and a yield claim worth checking

Misty Springs went up on Westlands Road in 2025: 23 storeys, a rooftop heated pool, face scan entry, five minutes from GTC. The letting material around it quotes KES 100,000 a month for a one bedroom, KES 300,000 for a furnished two bedroom, and a return of 8 to 10 percent. Two of those three numbers are useful. This is which, and why.

What the building actually is

A 23 storey tower on Westlands Road, finished in 2025, with two high speed lifts per block, a rooftop heated swimming pool, a rooftop barbecue and lounge deck, a gym, a children’s play area, an elegant reception, smart home features with facial recognition access, visitor parking and round the clock manned security with CCTV.

The location is the strongest thing about it and is not exaggerated in the listings: a short walk to the Global Trade Centre and the Kempinski, about seven minutes to Westgate, a kilometre to Sarit Centre, and quick access to the expressway. For a corporate tenant or a relocating family who wants to walk to work in Westlands, that is a genuinely good address.

What does an apartment at Misty Springs rent for?

Unfurnished, published listings put a one bedroom of about 58 square metres at KES 100,000 to 120,000 a month and a two bedroom of 90 to 99 square metres at KES 150,000 to 180,000. Furnished, a 68 square metre one bedroom is advertised at roughly KES 120,000 a month with utilities and weekly cleaning included, aimed squarely at remote workers and relocations. A furnished higher floor two bedroom with both bedrooms en suite is advertised at KES 15,000 a night on a two night minimum, or KES 300,000 a month.

Every one of those is an asking rate. The building is a year old. Nobody has a multi year letting record here, and an agent who tells you otherwise is describing the price list.

The yield claim, checked

Is the 8 to 10 percent yield at Misty Springs realistic?

The sales material pairs a one bedroom sale price of KES 8 million with rent of KES 100,000 to 120,000 a month. Do that division. KES 100,000 a month is KES 1.2 million a year, and KES 1.2 million against KES 8 million is a gross yield of 15 percent. At the top of the rent band it is 18 percent. The two bedroom at KES 15 million against KES 180,000 a month lands near 14 percent.

A building advertising a 15 percent gross yield and an 8 to 10 percent return in the same brochure is telling you that it has not checked its own numbers.

Good Nairobi apartment stock produces a gross yield in the high single digits. A genuine 15 percent would make this the best performing residential block in the city by a distance, and it would not need to advertise. So one of the two figures is doing marketing work. Either the KES 8 million is a launch or off plan price that is no longer available to you, or the KES 100,000 rent is what the vendor hopes rather than what tenants are signing.

Which it is matters enormously and is easy to establish. Ask for signed tenancy agreements at the quoted rent, not a price list and not a projection. Then take the gross figure and remove the service charge, a realistic void allowance for a tower where many units came to market in the same year, and management. What is left is the yield. Our workings for the city as a whole are in the best neighbourhoods for rental yield.

The furnishing spread is unusually wide here

Should I furnish my Misty Springs apartment for short stay?

Set the two advertised rates for a two bedroom beside each other: KES 150,000 to 180,000 unfurnished, KES 300,000 furnished. The furniture is being asked to roughly double the rent. In most Nairobi buildings the furnished premium is 30 to 60 percent, so a claimed doubling deserves scrutiny, but in this particular location it is not absurd.

Westlands has the deepest corporate, NGO and relocation demand in Nairobi, and this building sits inside walking distance of the Global Trade Centre and the Kempinski. Our Westlands data puts a well presented short let at 64 to 76 percent occupancy across a full year. The demand is there.

What it depends on is narrower than owners like to hear:

• Floor and outlook. The nightly listings in this building lead with the fourteenth floor and unobstructed skyline views over GTC and the expressway. On a low floor with no view you are selling the same amenity list as everyone else at a lower price
• Presentation, not furnishing. Adequately furnished and passively listed loses to a KES 170,000 unfurnished tenant who needs nothing from you
• Active management. The KES 300,000 figure assumes near full occupancy, nightly repricing and someone answering guests. Without that it is a number on a page
• The long stay route. The furnished one bedroom here is let monthly with utilities and cleaning included to remote workers and corporate arrivals. That is lower risk than nightly letting and often the better business for a single unit

The arithmetic both ways is in short let against long term rental, what it costs to furnish is in the cost to furnish a Nairobi apartment, and what Westlands does as a short stay market is in the Westlands host guide.

What to do if you own here

1. Publish the floor. In a 23 storey tower it is the single fact that separates your unit from the forty others like it, and most listings omit it
2. Decide furnished or unfurnished on honest presentation. Not on the KES 300,000 headline, which belongs to a high floor en suite unit that is actively run
3. Check the service charge and its collection rate. A heated rooftop pool, two lifts per block and a generator are only an asset while the levy is actually being collected to run them, and in a new building the first full year is when that gets tested
4. Get the position on nightly letting in writing. Before you furnish, not after
5. Ask your agent for viewing counts. No viewings is a marketing fault, viewings without offers is a pricing or presentation fault, and they are fixed differently

If it is sitting empty, the general diagnosis is in why your Nairobi rental keeps going vacant, and what the levy should cover is in service charge explained.

If you are looking to rent here

It is a good building to rent in if you work in Westlands, and the walk to GTC is the real selling point rather than the pool. Ask for the floor and the aspect before you view, because the difference between a low floor and a high one here is the difference between a city view and a view of the building next door at the same rent.

For a furnished stay of a month or more, ask explicitly what the long stay rate is and what it includes. Published furnished lets in this building already bundle utilities and weekly cleaning, and an owner holding empty nights in a new tower will usually go further than the listing. If you want us to tell you what is genuinely available, find a home is where to start.

How Goldstay handles it

We manage short stay and long lets in Westlands, including in this building, and we sold nothing here, so there is no sales projection of ours to defend. We charge 10 percent of rent collected on a long let and 20 percent of revenue on a short stay, with no setup fee and no exit fee. At Misty Springs the first thing we will tell you is what your specific floor and layout can actually achieve, which is usually not the brochure number and occasionally better than the agent’s.

If your apartment is empty, send it to us with the floor and the layout and we will come back with an achievable rate both ways and a straight view on which to take. What Airbnb management and long term management each cover is set out in full.

Related reading: the complete guide to Westlands, how Westlands went vertical and pricing a Nairobi rental.