01 / Pricing
Nobody knows what anything actually costs
Prices are negotiated in parking lots. The same apartment lists for three different amounts depending on who you ask. Renters have no baseline — just vibes and a broker's smile.
Our Story
We searched
for a home
in Nairobi.
We fixed it.
Fake listings. Invisible brokers. Prices no one would confirm. We built CityDwelling because finding a home in this city shouldn't feel like a gamble.
Why we exist
Nairobi's rental market doesn't work for renters.
We weren't property experts when we started. We were just people looking for apartments in Kilimani, Westlands, and Lavington — and hitting the same wall every time: listings with no prices, brokers who vanished after a viewing, WhatsApp threads that led nowhere.
Nairobi has 1.5 million rental units. The information for almost all of them lives in someone's phone, pinned to a gate, or buried in a Facebook group. That's not a market. That's chaos dressed up as normal.
So we built CityDwelling — not as a feature, but as a fundamental belief that every renter deserves to make a real, informed decision about where they live.
“The city has the homes. It just didn't have the transparency.”
Chris & Josh — Co-founders, CityDwelling
The Problem
Broken in three specific ways.
02 / Commute
Location means nothing without the commute
"Near CBD" can mean 20 minutes or 90 depending on matatu availability. A neighbourhood's real value is its transit connection — and that data doesn't exist anywhere.
03 / Visibility
Most of the inventory is invisible
The majority of Nairobi's 1.5M rental units are not online. They're on handwritten notices, gated compounds, or one agent's WhatsApp. The market is enormous. The visibility is near zero.
Our Mission
Every home in Nairobi,
online. In one place.
Not just the premium listings. Not just the ones with nice photos. Every unit. Every neighbourhood. Every budget. We're building the canonical database of Nairobi housing — so any renter can decide based on real information, not guesswork.
1.5M
Homes to bring online
That's the mission. We're not done until every one is here.
Three things we'll never compromise on.
We've built features, iterated constantly, and adapted to what renters actually need. But these three principles are fixed. They're what CityDwelling means.
🔍
01 / Transparency
Real prices. Real locations. No theatre.
We publish what things cost. Exact addresses, not vague descriptions. If a landlord won't show the real number, they don't list with us. Renters deserve a level playing field.
🗺️
02 / Neighbourhood Intelligence
Know the city before you sign a lease.
Every neighbourhood has real data: matatu routes, commute times, rent trends, Resident Pulse scores. You shouldn't need to live somewhere a year to understand it. We do that work for you.
🏙️
03 / Complete Coverage
If it's in Nairobi, it's on CityDwelling.
The 1.5M homes mission isn't marketing. We're bringing every rental online — from Westlands penthouses to Ruiru bedsitters. A platform showing 5% of the market isn't actually useful.
Built by people who actually rent in Nairobi.
We're not a team that studied the African market from afar. We live here. We've been burned by the same brokers you have.
C
📍 Nairobi
Chris
Co-Founder & CEO
"I spent three months looking for a place in Kilimani. Two fake listings, one ghosted broker, and a viewing fee I'll never get back. That's the origin story."
J
📍 Nairobi
Josh
Co-Founder & CTO
"The data to build this existed — GTFS routes, neighbourhood boundaries, price signals. The question was whether anyone cared enough to connect it all. We do."
A
📍 Nairobi
Abby
Co-Founder
"Renters in this city are smart, mobile-first, and completely underserved. They deserve a platform that actually treats them that way."
Early traction
We're just getting started.
But the signal is clear.
Nairobi renters are hungry for what we're building. Every neighbourhood we launch, every listing we verify, every matatu route we map — it compounds into something the city has never had before.
300+
Neighbourhoods mapped
0
Hidden fees ever charged
100%
Verified listings only
1st
Real neighbourhood intel in Nairobi
Find your home
Ready to find your home the right way?
Join Nairobi renters who are done with fake listings, hidden fees, and brokers that disappear. Your next home is already here.