A couple of years prior, a land designer called Andrew Kamau was said to be making a minimum of  Sh. 20 million per month making banda homes. His story on how he grew from rags to riches must have touched many souls.  Mr Kamau supported his story by pointing out how he used his savings to buy a 2 acre land in Makongeni in Thika worth Sh. 3.5 million. He then paid a deposit sh 350,000 and subdivided the piece of land into smaller pieces. The story would go on to tell us how he made a 3.5M profit after selling the plots and managed to pay for the balance to the 2-acre land.

Motivated by the great returns, he said that he changed gears and began buying land, constructing houses and selling them. His first housing venture was close to Kenyatta University where he purchased a piece of land and built 49 bedsitters on half of the plot and sold the other to finance the development. The units sold at Sh. 250,000 each making for him over Sh. 12 million.

It was at the age of 27 that he built his first residential house which was a 2 bedroom unit. He later sold the house at 1.6M.

“I make between Sh. 20 million and Sh. 25 million every month. Real estate is the place to be,” he would say.  In those days, Mr Kamau ran an organization called Dinara Developers.

Today, Mr Kamau has been making the headlines has been involved in a real estate storm involving innocent buyers and the Banda homes company which he manages. The company is now in trouble after failing to turnover properties to its buyers, years after receiving money from his victims.

The buyers are said to have bought the houses under off-plan housing projects. These units were to be built along the Thika Superhighway at Pinewood and Rosewood bequests. Each house was going for 3.9 million.it was a site visit conducted by the buyers, two years later, that revealed the houses were far from over.

Not only were the houses not complete but also the quality of the houses seemed to be questionable. However, Mr Kamau has blamed the delay on the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is not the first time that company has been reported to have issues with the buyers. In 2019, Banda homes were accused of shortchanging their buyers. The developer had failed to deliver homes after receiving payments from their customers worth 1.5 billion since 2018.