Skynest Residences, Westlands: what your unit actually earns

Skynest Residences on Mkungu Close is, on the numbers, one of the strongest short stay addresses in Nairobi. Agents quote its furnished two bedrooms at KES 15,000 to 16,900 a night, which is roughly two and a half times the average daily rate AirDNA records across the whole Nairobi market. If you own a unit there, that is the good news, and it is not the part that decides what you earn. The part that decides what you earn is how many of those nights actually sell, and on that measure the average Nairobi listing is nowhere near where a Skynest unit ought to be.

What the building is

• Location: Mkungu Close, Westlands, immediately next to the Mövenpick. Walking distance to Sarit Centre, close to Westgate, and about fifteen minutes to Jomo Kenyatta International via the Expressway
• Scale and mix: 249 fully furnished apartments in one, one and a half, two, three and four bedroom configurations. The one and a half bed is unusual in Nairobi and useful, because it sells as a small two bed to a guest while costing less to furnish
• Origin: brought to market by PDM Holdings, and operated as an aparthotel under the CityBlue brand as Skynest Residences by CityBlue
• Amenities: a rooftop with resident lawn, heated infinity pool, gym, sauna, squash court and a games room, plus an on site café, restaurant and minimarket, 24 hour security and CCTV, high speed internet and backup power. There is also a rooftop events and wedding venue
• Nearby medical: MP Shah and the Aga Khan are both close, which matters more than it sounds and we come back to it
• Quoted rents: furnished two bedrooms at KES 259,000 to 361,200 a month or KES 15,000 to 16,900 a night, and unfurnished two bedrooms from about KES 100,000 to 150,000 a month plus a service charge of around KES 17,000

The rate really is among the best in the city

It is worth being precise about this rather than just asserting it, because the gap is large enough to be interesting.

AirDNA’s public Nairobi page, refreshed in July 2026, records 13,110 active short stay listings in the city running at 41 percent average occupancy and a USD 47 average daily rate, with the average active listing earning about USD 3,500 across the trailing twelve months. Other platforms land in a similar place on rate, between the mid forties and the mid fifties in dollars.

Skynest’s quoted KES 15,000 to 16,900 a night is roughly USD 115 to 130 at the rates prevailing through 2026. That is about two and a half to two and three quarter times the city average. Some of that is the building and the furnishing standard, and a good deal of it is simply where it stands: platform data puts a meaningful premium on listings clustered around Westgate and Sarit Centre and on Westlands as a neighbourhood, and Skynest is inside that cluster rather than a ten minute drive from it. In Westlands specifically, a one bedroom within walking distance of Sarit behaves differently from an identical unit in the same postcode that needs a car.

Our own reading of the submarket says the same thing from the other direction. Westlands is the strongest short stay market in Nairobi because it is the only part of the city where a guest can walk to offices, Sarit and Village Market without touching a car, and its demand is corporate, UN and NGO rather than tourist, so it holds midweek and through the low season. We put the area at USD 100 to 150 a night at 65 to 75 percent occupancy for a well presented unit. Skynest sits at the upper end of that rate band.

Why the rate is not the investment case

Here is the part that owners at Skynest most often get wrong, and it is the reason this article exists.

A high nightly rate on an empty calendar is a number in a brochure. AirDNA has the average Nairobi listing selling 41 percent of its nights. At that occupancy, a Skynest two bedroom earns less than the same flat let unfurnished on a boring twelve month lease.

Take the arithmetic properly, on a furnished two bedroom at KES 15,000 a night.

• At 41 percent, the Nairobi average: about KES 187,000 a month gross. Take off a 20 percent management fee and you have roughly KES 150,000, and out of that you still fund electricity, water, internet, cleaning, consumables, linen and the roughly KES 17,000 service charge. Call it KES 88,000 net
• At 57 percent, the Nairobi top quartile: about KES 260,000 gross, and roughly KES 146,000 net on the same deductions
• At 70 percent, our Westlands figure: about KES 319,000 gross, and roughly KES 193,000 net
• The unfurnished long let, for comparison: KES 120,000 a month in the middle of the range, less a 10 percent management fee, with the tenant paying the utilities and the service charge. Call it KES 108,000 net, and it arrives whether or not anyone is travelling

So the honest conclusion is not that Skynest prints money. It is that at average Nairobi occupancy, short letting a Skynest unit underperforms an unfurnished lease, and at genuine Westlands occupancy it roughly doubles it. The whole investment case lives in the distance between 41 percent and 70 percent, and that distance is not a property of the building. Every owner in those 249 units has the same address, the same rooftop pool and the same walk to Sarit.

Which is a more useful thing to know than a headline rate, because it tells you where to put your attention. AirDNA’s own figures show Nairobi listings up 23.9 percent year on year while average daily rate slipped 3.8 percent. More supply, slightly softer pricing, and rising occupancy for the operators who are good at it. That is a market where the spread between a well run listing and an average one widens, not one where a good address carries you.

The choice every Skynest owner has to make

Skynest is unusual in Nairobi in that the building is run as an aparthotel under the CityBlue brand while individual units are privately owned, and at least one independent operator markets its own Skynest apartments separately. So you have real options, and they are genuinely different businesses rather than variations on one.

1. Into the operator’s programme. Simple, professional, and somebody else’s problem. The trade is that you are in a pool: the guest relationship, the reviews and the rate decisions belong to the operator, you take what the pool distributes, and if you later want to leave you have built no listing, no review history and no direct guests of your own. Ask what the split is, how rate decisions get made, and what happens to your unit’s performance record if you exit
2. An independent manager, with the listing in your name. More upside and more accountability, because the reviews accrue to your unit and the calendar is visibly yours. This is what we do, and we say why the account question matters more than the fee rate in how to tell Airbnb management companies apart
3. Run it yourself. Viable in a building like this, because the amenities, the security and the on site retail do a lot of the guest experience for you. It is a real job at 65 percent occupancy, and it is the difference between the top quartile and the average, so be honest about whether you will do it in a year
4. Let it unfurnished on a long lease. The quiet option, around KES 100,000 to 150,000 a month plus service charge. It is the right answer if you do not want an operating business, and on the arithmetic above it beats a badly run short stay listing

What to do if you own a unit there

1. Find out your actual occupancy, not your rate. If you are in a pool, ask for your unit’s occupancy and average achieved rate separately. A good rate and a thin calendar is the failure mode here and it is easy to miss when the money arrives in one line
2. Confirm what your unit may and may not do. In a building operated under a hotel brand, establish in writing what a private owner is permitted to do independently, and whether entering the operator’s programme restricts you later
3. Photograph the rooftop and the walk. The heated infinity pool, the squash court and the games room are the reasons a guest picks this building over a cheaper flat in Kilimani, and being able to walk to Sarit is worth saying in the first line of the listing rather than the eighth
4. Price the one and a half bed as a small two bed. If that is your layout, the guest search that finds it is the two bedroom search. How it is titled and configured decides which pool of demand ever sees it
5. Do not compete with 248 neighbours on rate. You are in a building where many units are near identical. Discounting is matched within a week and resets the whole building. Differentiate on presentation and on the guest you are writing for
6. Model both routes before you commit. Use your real service charge and your real furnishing cost. At Skynest the short stay usually wins, but only at occupancy you can actually achieve

The general versions of these are in short let against long term rental, pricing a Nairobi rental and the Westlands host guide.

If you are looking to stay at Skynest

A note for the other half of the people searching this building. Skynest is a straightforward recommendation for a business stay in Nairobi: you can walk to Sarit and to a good deal of Westlands, the Expressway puts the airport about fifteen minutes away, and the building carries backup power, a borehole standard of servicing and 24 hour security, which removes most of the ordinary friction of a Nairobi stay.

The thing worth knowing is that units in the building are sold both through the aparthotel operator and privately by individual owners, so the same building is available at more than one price. On a stay longer than a week or two it is worth asking a private owner directly, because that is where the rate has room to move. If you want us to tell you what is genuinely available, find a home is the place to start.

How Goldstay handles it

We manage short stay and long let apartments in Westlands, and we would like to manage yours at Skynest. Twenty percent of revenue on a short stay, ten percent of rent collected on a long let, no setup fee and no exit fee. If your unit is already listed and earning, we co-host on your own account so the review history you have built stays with you.

What we will actually do first is the sum in the middle of this article, with your unit, your floor, your layout and your real service charge. If your unit is in a pool already, we will tell you what we think we can add to its occupancy and what we cannot, and if the honest answer is that you should let it unfurnished on a long lease and stop thinking about it, we will say that and manage it at half the fee. We have written the same conclusion about GTC Residences, where the long let usually does win.

Skynest is the more clearly short stay building of the two, which is why we are keen on it. If you own there, send us the unit with the floor and the layout and we will come back with both numbers side by side. What each service covers is on Airbnb management, long term management and tenant finding.

Related reading: the Westlands guide, Shangri-La Residency for the opposite case, where a building of near identical units is struggling to let at all, and choosing an Airbnb management company.