Author Unknown
Lesson 1:
Buying real estate off plan is generally not a good idea. If the investment opportunity is compelling and you must buy off plan, buy from a company that has a track record. A company that has actually completed projects as promised. Simple Homes had no history, no land or houses.
Lesson 2:
Not everything that is promoted in the mainstream media is true. Do not take everything to be “factual” or true just because you read it in the Daily Nation, Star or the Standard. Not even because Maina Kageni & King’ang’i or Capital FM shout about it on rush hour radio. Extend your skepticism to deceptive TV adverts. Our journalists are corrupt and lazy. They are either too naive to conduct due diligence on companies they report on or are in the payroll of the promoters of these phantom investment schemes.
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Buy a journalist a cup of “tea” and he will write a story claiming you are a “Billionaire” or “successful businessman” without asking for tangible evidence of your “success”. Remember “billionaire” Steve Mbogo? Due to our journalistic sloppiness 3/4 of our publicly declared “billionaires” are just con men looking for appropriate publicity. Real billionaires in Kenya often shy away from the media due for many reasons, including unwarranted scrutiny and taxation.
A Kenyan journalist will assume that one is a “billionaire” because he saw the subject in a used Range Rover. That is how the media assists con artists to swindle their victims by creating non-existent or deceptive profiles of people and companies. Simple Homes was partly created by the media. A recent case is Barracuda Airways. A simple due dilligence would have indicated that it is a “paper” airline with no office and aircraft. None of the offices listed on the airline’s website exist. A google search will indicate how journalists assisted “Barracuda Airways” to create a fake profile.
Lesson 3:
A company website says alot about the integrity of its owners, especially in the real estate space. Some real estate companies “steal” images of other real estate projects around the world and post them as their own. The Simple Homes website had such images.
Simple Homes were sleek. Sleek facebook adverts and telephone calls inviting Kenyans who cared that they could now own a home by paying a cheap deposit and thereafter the balance in affordable “rent.” Owning a home is an aspirational goal for many. That aspiration was the bait. You could not visit the project site until you paid a deposit for one of the units. Another point which should have raised alarm is that the hire purchase plan was interest free. Who was funding them? They required 25% of the house value in deposit (about Kshs. 250,000 – cheap considering similar houses under bank mortgages) and then the balance in equal installments for 5-40years. 40 years interest free? How?
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The need for instant gratification make many Kenyans vulnerable to being cheated. If you can afford monthly payments on the Simple Homes non-existent hire purchase scheme then you can easily build your own house.