"The things you own..."

"... end up owning you". Tyler Durden first came out with this line in the film Fightclub. I've kind of adopted this into my religion. No surprise therefore that homeowning has never been on the agenda - until now.

In pure investment terms, I've always considered property to be a poor option. That's not to say there isn't an unmeasurable value from owning your own home in which to raise your family. But as an investment, not great. When you rent a place and your plumbing leaks, you call the landlord. Cracks appear in the wall, you call the landlord. Ceiling collapses after a meteor hits your roof, you call the landlord. Sure, he/she might take their time in sorting it, but it's them who sorts and pays for it. When you own a place, you sort it and you pay for it.

So why start the blog with a discussion on owning property? Because what I'm facing with my father's old house is a reminder of why I've avoided property till now! But let's back up a bit to examine where we are.

Even with the roof fixed the outside looks in need of attention

Cracks and broken doors 

Leaking ceilings are a bit of a nightmare!

After my father retired, he effectively moved to a farm in Kenya's beautiful rift valley to pursue his passion for agriculture. The side consequence of this was that he'd only spend a few days a year at his home near Nairobi. Inevitably, the Nairobi house suffered. Leave any house for over  ten years and it will suffer; add the equatorial sun, 2 months per year of torrential rain and tile-throwing monkeys to the equation and you even bigger problems. Five weeks were spent last summer clearing the inside while workmen (kind of) fixed the sieve of a roof. Now we're into repairing everything else. Ceilings, floors, walls, electrics, plumbing, windows... literally everything!

Saturday's meeting therefore was with building contractors. In Kenya, you have two broad options for building works: (1) hire fundis (workmen) and organise them or (2) take contractors.

While fundis are cheaper (typically 600-800ksh, 5-7 euro per day around Nairobi), they are risky. Good fundis are in short supply. Hiring fundis is like having children as they require constant attention, all day long. You have to run around getting materials for them and always be supervising (they are paid at day rate so will drag the job out as long as possible). From my experience, you can even end up having to feed them, though thankfully in my case the feeding didn't involve the use of my breast! Furthermore, fundis can make horrific mistakes which may seem obvious to you and me, but are not to them. Things which should be square (such as rooms) have the habit of turning into parallelograms, or in the worst case, triangles.  Vertical constructions often end up looking like the leaning tower of Pisa. Electrical sockets might be fitted upside down. If you've ever visited the site faiblog.org and seen some of those horrible construction fails, that is what fundis, in the worst case, can do for you. In their defence, fundis often haven't had much formal education and have only learnt on the job.

Contractors on the other hand are significantly more expensive, but (from my second hand experiences at least) they tend to get the job done to a high standard. Not least because they tend to specialise in just one area.

So in order to save my sanity and make sure the job gets finished inside 3 months, I made an early choice for contractors. Another cousin of mine, Maggie was kind enough to hook me up with a very good and friendly architect who in turn recommended the contractors. Most of them I'd already met on previous trips, but Saturday's meeting was with ALL the contractors. Except the two who got stuck in traffic (there we go with the 1.6m- vehicles-in-Nairobi problem again)! So that was seven contractors (interior finisher; plumber; gutterer; electrician, carpenter/kitchen cabinet maker, structural engineer and welder/window fixer) minus two stuck in traffic, plus the architect.

After five hours of meeting we emerged with a draft workplan and an agreement on most aspects of the budget. Though there are still a few things to hammer out, work will start on Monday. Finally it feels like the wheels are in motion...