Factors Influencing Real Estate Property Prices A Survey of Real Estates in Meru Municipality, Kenya

Real estate is often used to refer to things that are not movable such as land and improvements permanently attached to the land. Different types of real estate can have very different cyclic properties. Real estates go through bubbles followed by slumps in Meru municipality and some real estate properties take shorter time while others take longer to sell despite that the prevailing conditions seem similar. Several studies done especially on changes in prices of real estates revealed that real estate prices go through bubbles and slumps. The study therefore, investigated factors at play in determining real estate property prices in Meru Munincipality in Kenya. The study investigated factors such as incomes of real estate investors, the influence of location on the price, demand and realtors influence on the price. The study adopted descriptive research design to obtain information on the current status of the phenomenon. Structured questionnaires were used in data collection to obtain the required information needed for the study. The population consisted of all 15,844 registered real estate owners in the 5 (five) selected areas of Meru municipality from which a sample of 390 real estate owners were selected by stratifying the population and then selecting the respondents by use of simple random sampling. The data obtained was analyzed by use of available statistical packages for social sciences to obtain descriptive statistics and a regression model. Findings indicated that incomes alone contributed almost 70% of the variations in prices. Demand alone contributed 20% of the changes in prices of real estate. Location and Realtors were found insignificant in determining real estate prices. A summary regresion showed that the variables consindered could explain up to about 70% of variations in prices. The study recommends that further investigation be done on reasons why location and realtors were not significat in determining real estate property prices in Meru municipality