Up the sharp, winding ramp you drive and park on the fourth floor of a dour-looking Finance House.
Through a side door, you take the forlorn staircase [lifts are being fixed] to the eighth floor, where you pop your head around an office doorway and ask a young fellow manning a desk, ‘Is this Mr Peterson’s office?” When he asks, “Who?” you move further down the corridor, push open a door to a deathly quiet office with no sign of anyone, and then enter through another door to find a studious personal assistant.
“Hi, I might be lost. I’m looking for a Mr Peterson?” She gets up, opens a door, and there is Mr Peterson Mwangi, younger than his actual age, agile on his feet, with a firm handshake and an easy, bounce-off-the-wall demeanour for a man in finance. Suddenly, you feel like you have known him for a long time. Or you need to.
Peterson’s got a wealth of experience in stock brokerage, which he isn’t active in anymore because he did it for years before moving to turn around Equity Bank’s Custody and Investment business, before leaving to start his own enterprise as the Managing Director of Finance and Systems Consultants and a real estate company called Property Depot.
I’m here because one of my editors thinks you are smart and interesting. Are you smart and interesting?
[Laughs] I could be smart, yes, but am I interesting? [Pause]. I don’t know…but I have things to say that you might find interesting.
Things to do with real estate and finance.
I think I met your editor through a friend of mine, Linus, your former CEO. We had a stimulating conversation about business and investments. At that time I was deeply engaged in the stock market, not anymore. Now I sit on the board of one of the investment banks.
However, and maybe this is what piqued his curiosity, was one type of investment we have all taken for granted as a speculative asset: real estate. See, real estate shouldn’t be speculation. It should be an asset class in anybody’s portfolio.
Say Biko buys an eighth of an acre deep in Nanyuki, in a place he will hardly ever step in—that’s what Bitange Ndemo (Kenyan ambassador to Belgium and the EU and Business Daily columnist) famously called dead capital.
Try selling it and see. We are now helping people look at real estate differently. Most people also don’t realise that a mortgage is an investment because the return on investment is healthy.
People look at mortgage instalments as an expense. It’s not because there is a component of principal and interest. The principal is your savings, and your main expense is the interest. Even if you didn’t take a mortgage, you’d still have incurred that cost to build. So your real cost, and what you should compare with your rent, is your interest because that is the expense bit. It is what it is costing you.
The advantage of interest on your mortgage is that it helps you maintain the value of your house at the time you built it. Additionally, you can expect rents to consistently rise over time. Although rent increases may not happen as quickly, they generally go up every year, while mortgage interest tends to decrease over time.
By the time you finish paying off your loan, people often focus on the total amount of interest paid. While it’s true that you’ve paid a significant amount in interest, it’s crucial to compare that with the appreciation of your property over the same period. Consider how much money you’ve saved by not having to pay rent as well.
Moreover, it’s important to note that you can claim up to Sh360,000 per year in mortgage interest when filing your taxes.
An acquaintance was lamenting how he bought a house in Kilimani 15 or so years ago. It was quiet and organised, a place to raise his two girls. A few years ago someone built a ghastly highrise right behind his house. The tenants ogled into his backyard. He couldn’t even enjoy his garden anymore. The neighbourhood became unrecognisable with more highrises. He had to sell it, at a lower rate than the value he anticipated, and run far away. So much for that, yes?
[Chuckles] First, you cannot hold back progress, Biko. It’s going to happen. The city will keep eating the city. A similar thing happened to where I live. We used to feel very secure; now my neighbour across the road has done something similar. You can’t stand in the way of progress.
Second, you can always sell it and buy another property away from the city where you can have a quiet life. Now, the kind of property that you need to invest in is in a place where you have gated community-controlled development. But note that bylaws keep changing. So when the bylaws catch up with you, you have no choice but to comply.
But look, we build or buy these houses based on decisions we make as parents. But the truth is, these children will grow up and not care about these investments. These investments are only desirable to you. They will sell them.
Property Depot LTD Managing Director, Peterson Mwangi, during an interview at his office in Nairobi on April 23, 2025.
Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation Media Group
What life do you want for yourself now, at 57?
The other day I had a conversation with my daughter [27]. She's a lawyer. She said, “Dad, you need to slow down. I think you even work harder than me.” I want to have a busy life. I’m not going to slow down anytime soon.
When you have enough experience and knowledge, you can get brilliant results. They say your 60s are when your brain really starts to kick in. The day you stop using your head, you start losing it.
And so, one of the things I'll probably be doing in a year or two is writing a book—a way of transitioning knowledge to other people while also making me immortal.
What's your ideal home like?
A small cottage, three bedrooms, ensuite. A nice fireplace. A study and a nice kitchen. Somewhere far from the city, like Zaria Village, where I have a plot but haven’t built. It’s a controlled development.
You also want a place with people your age where you can relate to your neighbours.
Mine was a village childhood. I grew up in the highlands, Murang'a, where we grew coffee. Right now, there isn't even one bush. It was messed up.
Growing up, coffee was so lucrative. It was the time of the famous Chepukube Market, where coffee was being smuggled from Uganda and sold at a high price. I particularly remember December of 1977 because the bonuses were so great we all got new shoes and clothes. [Laughs]
My parents were a level higher than peasants. We were taught the value of hard work. I wanted to get into marketing because one of my uncles worked for Esso as a sales manager and would come to the village in a brand-new car from the showroom.
However, another uncle advised against pursuing that path; he insisted that I should study accounting since I was very good at math. I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house, where her strictness influenced how my siblings and I grew up.
When was your life very difficult?
Young people nowadays say growing up is a scam. It’s been a scam for a while. [Laughs]. My most difficult time was when I started working and I was expected to educate my siblings with my Sh2,500 salary.
I was renting a single room in Githurai for Sh450 per month. Trying to balance all those interests was very challenging.
What's been your worst investment? It could be a financial or emotional investment.
I once invested in a foreign exchange (Forex) bureau, and we were confident in our projections, believing we would make a significant profit. I invited some friends to join me in raising the capital we needed, which was Sh30 million. My partner contributed 50 percent, so I was responsible for raising the remaining Sh15 million.
Since I didn’t have that amount, I turned to other friends for help, and one of them brought in a friend I didn’t know very well. However, I failed to do thorough due diligence and didn’t realise that Forex bureaus require approval from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), and that all investors need to be approved.
My friends were reluctant to have their names vetted for various reasons, so I didn’t include their names in the official documentation.
Unfortunately, the business did not perform as well as we had hoped, and my friends began to grow impatient and demanded dividends.
They couldn’t understand why the business wasn’t progressing as promised, and soon they were questioning why their names weren’t listed with the CBK. Since they didn’t want to go through the vetting process, I had left their names out.
The situation became very messy, and I eventually had to sell some of my other assets to pay them off. This turned out to be my worst investment, and it ultimately ruined my friendships.
Numbers, figures, and investments seem to come easy for you; what else comes easy?
Making friends, which goes against what we know about finance guys. I'm not an introvert like most guys in finance or accounting. I’m extroverted, and maybe that's why I’m able to convince people to make real investments in real estate. I'm able to crunch numbers very quickly and tell you the story of those numbers.
Zaria Village is one of my big heists; it was challenging, but it's done very well.
What do you do for fun? You don’t strike me as a drinker.
[Laughs] What do drinkers look like?
Drinkers look their age, or older. [Laughs] Well, I don’t drink, which leaves me to do many things. I do mountain climbing, and I’m also an ardent golfer. I have also served in the church for very many years.
I served at All Saints Cathedral for many years; I only stopped in 2023. I was the treasurer, then the chair of the Finance Committee. I had to leave it for others to also serve the Lord.
