Nairobi’s rental market has just hit a new high. According to the most recent data from HassConsult covering the end of 2025, Nairobi’s suburban rental market achieved a significant benchmark as yields increased to 7.4%, marking the highest performance observed in reports since 2007.
This peak was driven by consistent rises in rent alongside more moderate growth in property values, a trend especially noticeable in the neighborhoods surrounding the city center. This means the yields people are getting from rent, compared to the price of their property, are very good right now.
However, this isn’t a simple boom story; it reflects two different markets moving in separate ways. On one side are the growing satellite towns like Ruiru and Kiambu, which have annual rent increases of 15.6% and 14.4% respectively.
A growing cohort of residents and investors are choosing these areas for better value, more space, and modern community living, transforming them into robust engines for reliable monthly rental income. Across all monitored satellite towns, this trend pushed rents up by 8.7% in the last quarter alone.
On the other side, neighborhoods like Runda saw house prices rise by 12.8% over the year, though growth slowed to 0.9% in Q4. Lavington, Ridgeways, and Muthaiga all experienced annual price growth exceeding 10%.
Rent in these prime areas also increased, led by Ridgeways at 9.6% and Lavington at 9%, highlighting continued confidence in the long-term value and stability of the city’s core residential enclaves. The apartment market also tells a story: while rental prices for apartments rose in all satellite towns and most suburbs, sales price performance was mixed.
For example, Westlands saw apartment sales prices fall by 11.5% over the year, the largest decline recorded, though the drop eased to just 0.5% in Q4 as demand began to align with new supply.
According to Sakina Hassanali, Co-CEO of HassConsult, demand in the apartments market is always expanding, but each area is now finely tuned to the volume of new development it can absorb, with very large developments often creating temporary dips in rates as new entrants discount to achieve full occupancy.
This pattern was evident in Westlands, where a sharp rent surge in 2013 triggered a wave of construction, leading to periodic dips as new supply entered the market. Rents stabilised around Sh134,000 from May 2025, and by Q4, improved occupancy helped halt the decline in sales prices.
Similar trends temporarily suppressed rents in Kileleshwa and Upper Hill during the year, though both turned positive by the final quarter.
According to the report, a significant long-term shift is happening in property composition: apartments have grown from representing 23.5% of the market in 2001 to dominating at 71.1% as of December 2025, while detached houses have shrunk from 52% to just 8.5% of market share.
Overall, property values have multiplied more than five-fold since 2000, with the average property price rising from Sh7.1 million to Sh39.6 million by December 2025, while rents have increased 4.25-fold over the same period, from an average of Sh38,516 to Sh163,521 per month.
