Top property management companies in Kenya: how to read the lists

We are a property management company, so we are not going to hand you a ranked list of our competitors and pretend it is impartial. What we can do is something more useful: explain how to read the lists you will find, set out the criteria that actually distinguish firms in this market, and give you a method that produces a shortlist fitting your property rather than somebody’s marketing budget.

Four things to check on any list you find

Most "top ten property management companies in Kenya" pages are content marketing, and that is not a scandal, it is just a fact about how they came to exist. Four quick checks tell you how much weight a given list can carry.

1. Who published it, and are they on it? The most common pattern is a list produced by a firm that appears somewhere in it, usually near the top. Not dishonest exactly, but it is an advertisement wearing the clothes of a survey. Check the footer and the about page.
2. Are the criteria stated? A list that says what it measured, whether that is units under management, years trading or client retention, is making a claim you can interrogate. One that just asserts an order is expressing a preference.
3. Is it dated, and is it maintained? Property management is a business where firms change hands, lose key staff and quietly stop taking new work. A list from three years ago is a historical document, and several of the names on it may no longer operate the way they did.
4. Does it distinguish by segment? This is the failure that matters most and almost none of them address it. The firm best equipped to run a forty unit block with a service charge budget and a borehole is very unlikely to be the right choice for a single furnished two bedroom in Kilimani let to a diaspora owner. A single ranking implies one axis of quality, and there isn’t one.

There is no best property management company in Kenya. There is a best one for a specific property, a specific owner and a specific letting strategy.

Work out which segment you are in first

Before comparing anybody, place your property. The four segments below need genuinely different firms, and mixing them up is the most common reason a competent manager and a reasonable landlord end up unhappy with each other.

• Single residential unit, owner resident in Kenya.You need tenant finding and a light touch. Full management is often not worth the fee, as do you actually need a property manager works through.
• Single or few units, owner abroad. The binding constraint is communication across time zones and somebody physically attending. Reporting quality and response time matter more than scale.
• Whole blocks and commercial. Service charge administration, sinking funds, plant maintenance and statutory compliance. A different discipline, and firms that do this well are often poor at the individual diaspora landlord.
• Short let and Airbnb. A hospitality operation, not a letting one. Covered separately in choosing an Airbnb management company.

The criteria that actually separate firms here

These are the axes on which Kenyan managing agents genuinely differ, as opposed to the ones they all claim. Each is checkable before you sign.

1. Whether the fee is on rent collected or rent due.The clearest single dividing line in the market, because it decides who carries a defaulting tenant.
2. Where client money sits. A designated client account, separate from the firm’s trading account, versus rent paid into the operating account. This decides what you recover if the firm fails while holding two months of your income.
3. Whether anyone physically inspects, and writes it up.Ask for a name, a frequency, and what the last inspection on a comparable unit found. This is where remote owners are most often quietly failed.
4. Whether terms are published or quoted on a call. A published fee is a claim that can be compared. A quote after a discovery call is a price set with reference to you.
5. Whether there are consequences or only promises.Response times and payout dates are worth little without an agreed consequence attached. The presence of one is a decent proxy for whether the firm expects to be held to anything.
6. Who handles the MRI filing, and whether you see the receipt. Withholding the 7.5 percent and actually remitting it are different acts and only one leaves a trace.
7. Manager-to-property ratio. Rarely disclosed, highly predictive, and there is a number past which the inspection in point three cannot physically be happening.

The full set of questions built from these, with our own answers next to them, is in the questions to ask a property manager.

Building the shortlist

Assemble names from sources with evidence behind them rather than from a ranking. The best-run building near you, the other landlords in your block, and property advocates who see the aftermath of bad management are all better starting points than a list. Those routes are set out in detail in how to find a property manager in Nairobi, which also includes a one page brief to send to everyone you shortlist so the replies are actually comparable. If you would rather start from how the firms are structured than from names, property management companies in Nairobi breaks down the types and what each charges for.

Are we on the list?

We would be on a list of firms that publish their terms, and we should be honest about where we would not belong. We are built for the individual landlord, resident or abroad, with one to a handful of residential units in Nairobi. That is what our reporting, our payout mechanics and our USD remittance are designed around.

We are not the right firm for a forty unit block needing service charge administration and a sinking fund, or for commercial and retail space. Those are genuinely different disciplines and there are Nairobi firms that have done them for decades. If that is your property, a specialist will serve you better than we would, and we would rather say so here than after you had signed.

Where we do compete: 10 percent of collected rent for long-term management, 20 percent of revenue for short let, no setup fee, no contractor commission, no letting fee at renewal, nothing payable to leave, and written consequences behind the response time and the payout date rather than a service description. All of it is on the pricing page so you can compare it against anyone without speaking to us.

Related reading: the management agreement clause by clause, what management costs in Kenya and whether to leave the manager you have.