Student hostel developer Acorn Holdings has acquired a parcel of land in Eldoret town to set up its first hostels outside of Nairobi, regulatory filings show.
The company had earlier disclosed in a semi-annual report for its Acorn Student Accommodation Development-Reit for the first half of 2024 that it had identified Eldoret and Kakamega as the first tier two urban centres to host its student hostel developments, pending acquisition of land.
Filings submitted to the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) indicate that in Eldoret, Acorn is putting up the hostels under the Qwetu and Qejani brands on a 0.79-acre piece of land along Makasembo Road—near the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital and the Moi University medical school.
The company is expected to spend Sh1.55 billion to set up the two hostels, which will have a total of 514 rooms under the Qwetu brand and 510 rooms under Qejani—and a combined bed capacity of 2,291.
“Having concluded a feasibility study, we identified the first-tier II towns sites in Eldoret and Kakamega towns in Western Kenya.
“The two towns continue to demonstrate tremendous potential given the significant demand for dignified student housing within the target institutions in the areas,” Acorn said in the semi-annual report that was released last month.
Eldoret has one of the highest university and tertiary college student populations in the country outside of Nairobi, courtesy of hosting two public universities and satellite campuses of several other institutions.
Moi University has four campuses within Eldoret’s city footprint. They include Annex Campus, which hosts the university’s school of law, Town Campus that has the schools of medicine and dental sciences, Rivatex Campus (school of aeronautical engineering) and Eldoret West campus.
The University of Eldoret is also situated within the urban centre, as are satellite campuses and learning centres of Catholic University of East Africa, University of Nairobi and Kisii University.
By the end of June 2024, the ASA D-Reit held 11 properties under different stages of development at the end of June 2024, with a total valuation of Sh10.9 billion.
These include two hostels in Karen under the company’s Qwetu and Qejani brands that it expects to offload to the I-Reit by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
Once its projects are completed, the D-Reit sells them on to the Acorn Investment Reit (I-Reit), which generates income from rent and utilities that is then distributed as dividends to Reit holders. The ASA I-Reit has a portfolio of seven hostels, which had a valuation of Sh10.3 billion at the end of June.
The D-Reit uses the proceeds of the sales to settle the borrowings it had incurred when putting up the projects. Acorn normally funds projects with a mix of about 65 percent debt and 35 percent equity.
