By Thitu Productions
Housing prices have been rising at quite a fast rate in Kenya. With banks charging high interest rates to housing developers, these costs have been included in mortgage rates, leading to high costs to owning a home.
When housing developers are determining the right pricing to put on a home, they consider a number of things, including; land price, the cost of building materials, and market conditions, among others.
In this article, our focus is going to be on the cost of building materials.
Costs
In Kenya, the cost of construction is relatively high when it comes to building a house. Kenya has maintained the British standard codes that were put in place to regulate types of materials that housing developers should use during the construction process. These rules and regulations, which were created in May 1968 are expected to be followed to the latter by the Kenyan government. Thus, leading to high costs of construction.
According to the managing director of the Kenya Bureau of Standards’ (Kebs) Charles Ongwae, the outdated codes are expected to be replaced by the new European construction guidelines from January 2021.
With the implementation of Eurocodes, professionals in the construction industry will be required to re-train.
However, it’s important to note that a change to the Eurocodes does not guarantee lower costs in housing.
Building materials
Construction workers in Kenya are used to building houses from stone and mortar, which is time consuming and leads to high costs.
New construction methods that involve the use of advanced technological methods have not been fully explored by many house developers yet. If implemented in a cost-effective manner, these methods lead to lower costs in housing construction.
The use of technology has led to a reduction in construction costs in other parts of the world. Some of these methods include;
Glass fiber reinforcement gypsum (GFRG) — An Australian technology which saves 20–30% in construction costs. This method has been used by Australians since the 1990’s.
Porotherm smart bricks — walling materials that are designed for all building formats like large apartments, individual houses, villas, multi-storied buildings, and commercial complexes. They are a great way of saving construction costs.
SRC panel systems and EPS panels — are cost effective options. The materials are lightweight, and contain excellent insulation properties.
A rapid increase in population has pushed experts to innovating and developing numerous solutions to saving building costs that the technological advancement has brought in the housing industry. We are yet to see lower costs in the future as newer, faster and more effective methods continue to be developed.
