In 2015, Kings Pride Properties Limited was selling dreams. Apartments in Nairobi, off-plan, at prices that made sense for the growing middle class that wanted to stop paying rent . Windsor Gardens Apartments. Capital View Apartments. Glenwood Apartments. Different projects, different locations, different buyers — but the same company, the same structure, and, as it turned out, the same ending.
Ten years later, in May 2025, the High Court of Kenya issued a liquidation order against Kings Pride Properties Limited and appointed an Official Liquidator to take over whatever remained of the company. Which, judging from the court files, may have included a printer, several promises, and outstanding optimism.
This is the story of how that end was reached, told through three buyers whose experiences together paint a picture that every property investor in Kenya needs to frame, laminate, and read twice before paying a booking fee.
The first buyer is Amos Maina Mwago. In January 2016, he signed a Letter of Offer for a three-bedroom apartment at Windsor Gardens Apartments and paid a deposit of Ksh 2,250,000. He was told construction would be completed within three years. In Kenya, “three years” in real estate can mean anything from 36 months to “we ask for your continued patience as works progress.”
By 2018 he discovered the project had been abandoned. Grass was growing. Snakes were making love inside the premises. Lizards were basking. Dreams were not. He demanded a refund. Kings Pride responded by offering him a unit at a completely different project called Runda Royal — essentially the corporate version of, “We don’t have fries, but would you like samosas instead?”
He refused and went to court. But here is where the story took a turn nobody warns buyers about. Kings Pride came to court with a defence that worked. They were not the vendor, they said. The actual vendor was a separate company called Windsor Gardens Limited. Kings Pride was merely the marketing agent. The deposit had gone not to Kings Pride but to yet another entity called Telagen Investments Limited. At this point the transaction was beginning to resemble a relay race where everybody touched the money but nobody touched responsibility.
As a marketing agent for a disclosed principal, Kings Pride argued they had no liability. The Magistrates Court agreed. The High Court upheld that finding on appeal in August 2023. Amos had sued the wrong company. The vendor who had abandoned the project and kept his money was never before the court. Amos walked away having lost his deposit and having been ordered to pay Kings Pride’s costs of Ksh 50,000 — which is a particularly painful invoice to receive from people already holding your money.
The second buyer was Jackson Wandera Lutomia. He was more careful than Amos, or at least he tried to be. He signed his Letter of Offer for a unit at Capital View Apartments in August 2015 and paid his Ksh 9,500,000 purchase price in careful instalments over nearly three years, completing payment in February 2018. This was not “nitatoa balance mwezi ikiisha” money. This was disciplined spreadsheet money.
After the final payment, he and the developer executed a formal sale agreement stating explicitly the unit was sold free of encumbrances. He paid an additional Ksh 508,500 for title processing. He was handed possession, found a tenant paying Ksh 55,000 monthly, and believed the transaction was complete. The Kenyan dream had finally upgraded from “bedsitter in Roysambu” to “landlord.”
What he did not know — and what the sale agreement had neglected to mention with breathtaking confidence — was that in April 2016, while he was still paying instalments, Kings Pride had taken a loan of Ksh 90,800,000 from Eco Bank and used the land on which his apartment stood as security.
He discovered this in March 2020 when he found an auction poster near the building. Few things ruin your day faster than discovering your house is apparently also the bank’s house.
He went to court to stop the auction and lost. In October 2022 the auction proceeded. In December 2022 the bank took the property. His tenant was instructed to redirect rent payments to Eco Bank. Imagine building passive income only for the income to become passive for someone else.
Jackson eventually won a judgment in March 2025 ordering Kings Pride and Telagen Investments to refund his purchase price, legal fees, lost rental income, and damages totalling more than Ksh 12 million. But Kings Pride did not show up to defend the case. Which, in fairness, is difficult to do when your corporate structure is already spiritually checking out.
The third buyers were Sammy Mugendi Njeru and Joseph Kiruga. Between 2015 and 2019 they paid deposits totalling Ksh 9,776,000 towards apartments at Glenwood Apartments in Ruaka. No sale agreements were ever given to them. No apartments were ever delivered. No refunds were ever made. At some point the only thing under construction was disappointment.
They issued a statutory demand in September 2019. Kings Pride did not respond. They filed a liquidation petition in December 2019. The company filed a replying affidavit arguing the petition was untenable because no sale agreements existed to prove the purchases — a bold argument considering they were the ones who apparently never issued the agreements in the first place. It is difficult to ignore the energy of someone hiding your shoes and then asking why you are barefoot.
Other creditors came forward claiming debts exceeding Ksh 21 million. Kings Pride offered no credible evidence of its financial position, no restructuring proposal, and no settlement plan. On 8th May 2025, Justice Mulwa issued the liquidation order. Kings Pride Properties Limited was declared insolvent. The Official Liquidator was appointed. The company had reached the end that liquidation represents — corporate death, minus the funeral tents and tea.
Across these three cases, buyers paid a combined sum approaching Ksh 22 million to Kings Pride Properties Limited and its associated entities between 2015 and 2019. Some paid for apartments that were never built. One paid in full, moved in, found a tenant, and still lost the property to a bank auction. And when buyers went to court, they encountered a company that understood legal structure the way magicians understand distraction: keep moving things around fast enough and nobody notices where the problem actually is.
The lessons from the Kings Pride story are not abstract. They are practical and urgent because this story is not unique to Kings Pride. The structure it used — marketing agents, separate vendor companies, deposits paid to third-party accounts, sale agreements issued late or not at all, property charged to banks without buyer knowledge — exists across Kenya’s off-plan market in various forms, quietly waiting for the next optimistic buyer armed with a dream and a booking fee.
Before paying any deposit for off-plan property in Kenya, conduct a title search on the land and confirm it is free of charges, caveats, and adverse entries. In other words: before falling in love with the show house, first confirm the land has not already been promised to three banks and an uncle in Eldoret.
Confirm the legal identity of the registered owner and ensure the entity asking you to sign the sale agreement is the same entity that owns the land. If your deposit is being directed to a company whose name does not appear on the title, do not just nod confidently because the brochure had drone shots and a fountain. Ask questions. Difficult ones. Preferably before sending money.
Insist on a formal sale agreement before any payment, not after, and ensure it is reviewed by your own independent advocate whose loyalty is to you and not to the developer’s “friendly legal team.” Check the title again before making subsequent instalments because land can quietly become collateral between your first and second payment. And if a sale agreement says the property is free of encumbrances, verify that statement personally at the lands registry. Trust is good. Stamped searches are better.
Kings Pride Properties Limited is now in liquidation. The Official Liquidator will go through whatever remains of the company’s assets and attempt to satisfy creditors. For buyers owed money, the process will be slow, uncertain, and almost certainly incomplete. The apartments will not materialise. The refunds will compete with every other creditor in the queue. And the years spent in litigation, the sleepless nights after discovering auction posters, the tenants redirected to bank accounts — none of that appears in a liquidation order. It simply disappears into the long, quiet aftermath of a company that took people’s money and eventually ran out of road.
This is what the end of an off-plan developer looks like from the inside. Make sure you never have to see it from the inside yourself.
