RECORD OF 2026-09-27

216 SERIES IN THE REGISTER 216 SERIES 210 AUTOMATED, 6 CURATED 293,608 OBSERVATIONS 293,608 OBS WIRE LOG →

knbs ke.knbs.home-acquisition.irregular irregular

Modes of Home Acquisition by County.

↗ source

VERSION v2026-09-07

UPDATED 20d ago

COVERAGE 2023 - 2024

SHAPE 432 × 7

SIZE 6.6 KB

FREQUENCY irregular

PIPELINE automated

LICENSE Not stated

SOURCE www.knbs.or.ke

How Kenya's owner households came by the home they own: bought it, built it in one go, built it incrementally, inherited it, were given it, bartered for it, were allocated it by government or squatted, for the country and each of its 47 counties, from the 2023/24 Kenya Housing and Real Estate Surveys. Each geography carries the eight shares and the number of owner households they are shares of, 8,503,898 nationally.

Kenyans build the homes they own; they very rarely buy them. 52.8 per cent of owner households built their home in one go and 27 per cent built it incrementally, 13.2 per cent inherited it and 2.5 per cent purchased it. The median county has 1.2 per cent of owners who bought, and 41 of the 47 are under 5 per cent. Nairobi City is the exception: 34.8 per cent of its 127,901 owner households purchased, the highest share in the country by a factor of two over Nyandarua's 15.1, and the only county where buying is the commonest route. Inheritance is the commonest route in Garissa, Wajir and Lamu, and a gift is how 32.8 per cent of Wajir's owners came by their home. Incremental building overtakes one-off building in nine counties, led by Tharaka-Nithi, Meru and Nandi.

This is one survey round rather than a series, published under the same rule as the 2019 census. ke.knbs.housing-tenure.irregular, from the same chapter, gives the households each county has; this table's owner households divided by those gives an owner share within a tenth of a point of the tenure table's own in 36 of the 48 geographies and 1.05 points below it in Nyandarua at worst. That is the two tables being weighted separately rather than a misread, since each table's own arithmetic holds, and neither is adjusted to the other.

LOADING DATA...

BUILT, NOT BOUGHT

Only 2.5 per cent of Kenya's owner households bought their home, and 41 of 47 counties are under 5 per cent; Nairobi City, at 34.8, is the one place buying is the commonest route.

Share of owner households that purchased their home · per cent · 47 counties, 2023/24 survey

SOURCE: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics · Modes of Home Acquisition by County (2023/24 Housing Survey) · Updated 2026-09-07

#	survey_round	geography	geography_level	residence	indicator	value	unit
loading...

COLUMN	TYPE	DESCRIPTION	UNIT
survey_round	string	2023/24, the round of the Kenya Housing and Real Estate Surveys	-
geography	string	County name as ke.knbs.population.irregular publishes it, so the two join; or KENYA for the national row	-
geography_level	string	county or national	-
residence	string	Always total; the source table is for all areas only	-
indicator	string	share_purchased, share_constructed_one_off, share_constructed_incremental, share_inherited, share_gift, share_bartered, share_from_government and share_squatting, the eight modes as shares of the geography's owner households; and owner_households, the number those are shares of	-
value	float64	The figure as printed, in the unit named alongside	-
unit	string	per_cent for the eight shares, households for the count	-

CITATION · APA 7

Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. (2026). Modes of Home Acquisition by County [Data set] (Version 2026-09-07). Distributed by imibare. https://imibare.org/datasets/ke.knbs.home-acquisition.irregular