Property management companies in Nairobi, and how to tell them apart.

For long-term residential letting the market sits broadly between 8% and 12% of rent, and for furnished short-stay work between 15% and 25% of revenue. The spread matters far less than what the percentage is charged on and what it excludes: a rate quoted on rent due rather than rent collected, or one with tenant placement, renewals and a contractor margin charged on top, can cost more than a higher headline rate that includes everything. Goldstay charges 10% of rent collected for long-term management and 20% of revenue for short-stay, with no onboarding, renewal or exit fee and no margin on contractor invoices.

There is no single answer, and any company telling you it is the best one for every landlord is selling rather than advising. The right choice depends on what you own and where you live. If you are resident in Nairobi with one flat nearby and time to deal with it, self-management is genuinely viable and an agent is a convenience rather than a necessity. If you are abroad, own furnished stock, or need money to arrive in a foreign account on a predictable date, the things to compare are the fee basis, the quality of the monthly statement, how repairs are priced and whether the firm actually remits internationally.

Not one worth trusting by itself. Most of what ranks is a directory or a paid placement, and "top 10 property management companies in Nairobi" is a headline rather than a finding: nobody publishing those has read a monthly statement or spoken to a landlord who was three months in arrears. Worth knowing too that real estate management companies and property management companies are the same firms under two names in Kenya, so searching both only returns you the same pool. Build a shortlist of three from evidence instead — the best-run building near yours, other landlords in your block, and property advocates who see what bad management leaves behind.

Yes, and if you live in the city and own one or two units it may well be the right decision. What you are taking on is tenant sourcing and referencing, the lease, collecting the rent and chasing it when it is late, being reachable when something breaks, finding and supervising trades, holding and reconciling the deposit, and handling your own rental income tax. That is manageable locally. It becomes hard when you are in a different timezone, because every one of those tasks needs someone physically present at short notice, and a relative doing it as a favour is the arrangement that most often fails.

It depends entirely on what you would otherwise do with the property. On a 10% fee, an agent has to earn back roughly five weeks of rent a year to be free — which they do if they cut your void periods, place a better tenant, or stop one arrears problem escalating. If your flat sits empty for two months because nobody was marketing it, or a bad tenant takes a year to remove, the fee was never the expensive part. If you are local, organised and already have a good long-standing tenant, honestly, you may be paying for very little.

You are looking for a firm rather than an individual, because an individual has no cover when they travel or fall ill, and no separation between your rent and their bank account. The specific things to check when you are not in the country: that you receive an itemised monthly statement without asking, that funds are remitted to your own overseas account rather than held for collection, that the exchange rate basis is stated rather than chosen, and that someone can attend the property the same day when a tenant reports a leak.

If you live in Nairobi, own a single unit close to home and have a tenant who has paid on time for years, our fee buys you convenience and little else, and we will tell you that on the call. We are also the wrong fit for unfurnished lets far outside the areas we cover, because our value depends on being able to get a person to the property quickly, and for landlords who want the cheapest possible headline rate rather than the fully-inclusive one.