Thursday, March 28, 2024

Taking my real estate business global at only 31 years

At 31, many women are content working routine jobs as employees. This option is preferred because it affords them the convenience to work and take care of their families.

Not so for Faith Mwaura. For the mother of two, a desire to build a unique real estate business and the satisfaction of living the dream of running her own business has seen her spend months on end abroad selling real estate.

“On campus, I used to organise tour packages for students to destinations such as Naivasha, Mombasa or Masaai Mara,” says Faith.

Faith is a Marketing and Business Management graduate from Daystar University and a lead expert in Environmental Impact Assessment and Audit. She is currently enrolled at the University of Liverpool for a Masters Degree in Project Management. She also heads the Residential department dealing with Property Acquisitions, Agency, listing of properties on the RE/MAX portal and marketing consultancy to ensure clients get maximum exposure for their properties. She is also in charge of staff recruitment and training to ensure developers get well trained highly performing agents.

After graduating, she was offered an opportunity at International Life House, Nairobi, which opened her eyes to the gold mine in real estate. “I was in charge of marketing the business centre. My job involved looking for short term leases; say six months, from international businesses looking to set up operations in Kenya.

The business centre opened up my eyes to the huge business opportunity in real estate,” says Mwaura. After a year as a management intern, Mwaura registered her real estate firm, Heritage ltd. It was a baptism of fire — the start-up learnt that there are more challenges than opportunities out there.

“I was fighting established property firms with deep pockets, years of experience and tens of clients. The only way to curve my niche was to offer personalised services. So, instead of offering properties to clients, we sought to understand our clients’ needs — family size and health conditions — and then fetch a property for rent or for sale,” she says.

Having found a small niche, Mwaura set her sights on the global market and sought partners that could smoothen her launch abroad. In 2014, she acquired the franchise rights from RE/MAX (Real Estate Maximum), one of the biggest real estate globally, with 6,800 offices.

RE/MAX Heritage connects property developers to buyers and renters locally and internationally. “As a RE/MAX franchise rights holder, we access properties globally. We can also sell or rent out Kenyan properties abroad,” she says.

Traditionally, Kenyan real estate firms host home expos or participate in them in the domestic market. But Mwaura’s concept of is selling properties abroad. This year, she launched RE/MAX Heritage International Homes Expos focusing on Kenyans in the Diaspora. An expo was held in Australian cities of Melbourne and Sydney. This September, she will be holding two other Expos in Ottawa and Toronto, Canada.

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