For many people, failure to scale up the education ladder is a matter that has a potential to detrimentally weigh down on their lives.
However, Leah Wambui seems to have turned the pain of missing out on university education due to financial constraints into establishing herself in the real estate venture.
She is the current CEO of Cheriez Properties Limited located in Kitengela. The firm boasts of 200 houses each valued at ksh17 million.
When she was 16, she lost her mother and this forced her to stay with her aunt. She helped her in managing her shop especially during the holidays.
“Even when I was a little girl, I always wanted to be like her. I admired that she would travel the world and she looked nice and had nice things,” Wambui told a popular YouTube channel.
At one point, she thought of starting a wines and spirits business and reached out for financial help from her aunt.
“I talked to my auntie, I said I wanted to start something like what she was doing. I wanted to start out in Nairobi but the amount of money that she could get was only enough to start out in Kiambu,” says Wambui.
Her business was successful and she even managed to save part of the profits in table banking groups popularly known as chamas. Her burning ambition to grow forced her to borrow a car in a move to spread the business tentacles to nearby towns and maximize on profits.
Launch of Cheriez Property Limited
In 2009, she bought 8 acres of land in Kitengela after selling their house, shares and topping up the money with savings. Wambui’s newly found ambition was to invest in real estate.
At the start, she sank a borehole and constructed the boundary wall. By the end of 2015, she had set up 10 houses and planned to sell each at 17 million.
However, what was an ambitious project turned to be more stressful as potential buyers would visit the site, ask her countless questions then shrug off her offers.
“We had our first show house and we invited people to come. I thought that the moment we had the show house we would get clients. I got into a rude shock. People came – and the questions that followed; are you an architect? Are you an interior designer? How many projects have you done?” she recalls.
She resorted to marketing the houses internationally, but she still couldn’t get the first buyer until the end of 2016 when two customers came in. Wambui, a deeply religious woman owes success to her prayerful tendency.
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By the end of 2017, she had received enough money to expand her real estate venture and built more houses. Her first project named ‘Royal Finesse Homes’ with 78 houses was fully sold out by 2020.
Wambui successfully rolled out the second housing project, a gated community home with 78 four-bedroomed houses each with a detached SQ, private garden and fully fitted kitchen. Additionally, the gated community has swimming pools, equipped gyms and kids playing area.
She attributes her fruitful venture to prioritising quality and paying attention to the smallest of details.
“Our products sell for themselves, we go over and beyond and make sure that we have cut out a niche in the way we deliver our products. We try to wear the shoes of the person who is going to buy and live here,” she says.
