Esther Njuguna, 30, lives in a rented apartment in Jylland, Denmark. When she moved to Denmark in 2016 as an au pair, a programme where a young person lives with a host family and helps around the house while learning the language and culture, she never thought one day she would even afford her own home in a foreign country.
‘When I started, I’d be given about Sh70,000,’ she says of the au pair contract in Denmark, which usually runs for two years and is only open to people between 18 and 29 who are not married and have no children.
When the programme ended, she got married to a Danish man. In Denmark, marrying a native is not an outright route to getting the dream home.
‘When a Danish marries an African, he has to pay around Sh2 million to the government, but if the spouse can speak the language, it’s cheaper; one pays around Sh50,000,’ she talks of the wait for a residence permit through family reunification.
With her CPR number, the Danish social security number, and residence permit, she enrolled in college to study caregiving. She later got a job earning from Sh3,500 to Sh5,900 an hour.
While searching for a dream home, every landlord who reviewed her application would ask the same three things every time. ‘Where’s your work contract? How much do you earn? You show them your monthly salary for three months,’ she says.
‘I now stay in a two-bedroom house, which is 105 square metres, and I pay around Sh140,000,’ Esther says of her current home, a family-designated apartment with two toilets, a laundry space and a glass-covered balcony she can use through winter.
Buying a home in the UK
Phoebe Gathoni is a Kenyan in her 40s living in the UK. She started by renting before buying property there. On renting, she explains that the search begins through property apps where estate agents list available houses.
‘You then book a viewing,’ she says.
Once a tenant decides on a home, the paperwork begins in earnest.
She lists identification, proof of the right to rent issued by the Home Office to confirm legal status in the country, a reference from a previous landlord or, for newcomers without that history, a letter from an employer instead, and an address history covering three to five years.
‘If you’re new to the country, this can be problematic, so usually a letter from your employer will do,’ she says.
A holding deposit secures the property while those checks are completed, and only once everything clears does the real deposit come due.
‘Once all those things go through, you then pay a deposit that’s usually one and a half months’ rent,’ she says, adding that the sum is held by a government-backed scheme.
‘When you move out, if there are no issues, it is returned to you,’ she says.
Buying a home, she says, is a far longer road. It starts the same way; browsing listings, booking a viewing and making an offer, but she stresses that the real work begins before an offer is even made.
‘It is advisable to sort out a Mortgage in Principle before you start looking,’ she says, a document a mortgage broker helps secure after a credit check and a review of six months of bank statements, six months of payslips, identification, and, for anyone without permanent status, proof of legal residence from the Home Office.
‘Mortgage brokers deal with the banks once you have done your credit checks and given all your documents,’ she says. Once a price is agreed, a solicitor takes over.
‘You need a solicitor, a lawyer, who does the conveyancing, the legal bits,’ she says, ‘who also costs a minimum, I think, starts from Sh223,500.’
From there, the bank runs its own deeper check on the buyer. ‘The hard search includes the bank going to view the property through a surveyor, and they check if the house is valued as the buyer has said,’ she says, a step that takes at least a month and can still end in a mortgage being declined even after a Mortgage in Principle was granted.
For her, her solicitor was still running council searches on the property’s history and any developments nearby, a process she says ‘can take from two weeks to many months depending on how quickly the council responds.’
Buyers must also arrange their own structural survey. ‘Surveys cost from Sh200,000 to Sh515,000,’ she says, and any concerns it raises get passed back and forth between solicitors for months until both sides are satisfied.
Once everything clears, contracts are exchanged, and a deposit is paid straight to the buyer’s own solicitor. ‘Minimum 5 percent but usually 10 percent,’ she says of the deposit, ‘and at this point there is no turning back, all parties are locked in.’
On completion day, the bank sends the mortgage funds to the buyer’s solicitor, who passes them to the seller’s side, and the keys are handed over soon after.
Looking back on her own purchase, she sums up the scale of the process in one line. ‘We bought it, and it took about nine months in total,’ she says.
Renting in Germany
Monica Wanjiku is another Kenyan who found a home in Germany. But securing a place was not easy. Her search coincided with the start of the war in Ukraine, which drove more people into Germany’s rental market and further tightened an already limited supply of housing. But even with fewer homes available, rent increases in Germany are not simply a matter of landlords’ discretion.
‘It’s not like in Kenya, where a landlord can raise the rent whenever they feel like it,’ she says. ‘Here, rents are regulated by the government.’
Growing up in an orphanage, Monica moved to Germany in 2019 on a family reunion visa after meeting a German partner at the Kenyan coast. She settled in a small German town where she was often the only Black person around. ‘I felt out of place; I felt like an alien,’ she says.
To settle fast, she studied the language, got a driving licence, then enrolled in a nursing school. She graduated in 2026 from Akademie fr Beruf Gesundheit Schule and moved straight into work as a nurse, earning about Sh3,000 an hour.
Getting the perfect house meant she had to hand in her personal documents almost every time.
‘Normally, they want to know who you are. Alongside identification, applicants must show they can keep up with rent, and a work contract is the clearest proof of that,’ she says.
In addition to identification and proof of income, many landlords also ask for a police clearance certificate before handing over a lease.
‘I pay around Sh132,000 rent a month,’ she says of her current home, which is a three-bedroom apartment of 94 square metres near Dusseldorf and Cologne. ‘That includes the water and electricity bills.’
One thing that stood out to her was the 10pm house rule. In Germany, breach of estate rules carries real consequences. ‘No noise should come from your house past 10pm,’ she says, and breaking that rule more than once can cost a tenant their home entirely.
‘The penalty is you’ll be kicked out of the house. Your lease will be terminated,’ Monica says.
She finally received her German citizenship in July, seven years after arriving in the country.
Homeownership in the US
How much they pay in rent is one of the financial burdens Kenyans in the diaspora grapple with.
Tabby Mbeky, 32, a Kenyan who sells homes in the US, says that in Dallas, for instance, a one-bedroom apartment in a rougher part of town might cost around Sh129,700 a month in rent, while a decent one-bedroom in a better area climbs to about Sh194,500.
‘For anyone seeking a nicer, more upscale unit, be ready to spend at least Sh324,250 every month,’ she says.
She says understanding the credit system is the single most valuable lesson for someone seeking to own or rent a house. Once a bank account is opened, every payment links back to a social security number and slowly builds a financial record.
‘You need to work on your credit first. And then once that’s done, everything else is going to be straightforward,’ she says.
Her own strategy was disciplined and simple. She used credit cards but cleared the balance immediately every time. ‘I was using credit cards, but if I use it, I paid them off immediately,’ she says. ‘So I was able to build my credit very fast and have a very solid credit too.’
For those without any credit history, she outlines two practical routes. The first is finding a cosigner, someone with strong credit willing to vouch for a lease or loan. ‘A cosigner can be anybody,’ she says, provided their financial profile is solid. She found hers without much difficulty. ‘I just approached a friend, and the friend was willing to cosign me.’
The second option is being added as an authorised user on a relative’s credit account. ‘If their credit profile is already at 800, if they add you on that, you’re now also getting a good credit,’ she says.
She believes this kind of guidance rarely reaches the people who need it most. ‘A lot of information is needed in our community,’ she says.
Once she felt ready to invest, she made a deliberate choice to avoid debt entirely. ‘I came here and decided to stay away from debt,’ she says. ‘So everything I was buying, I was paying cash.’
She began with investment properties before purchasing anything for personal use, and she opened a business to separate her company’s credit from her own. ‘I was able to protect my personal credit from being overleveraged,’ she says.
For those looking to pick mortgages in the US, she says two central factors matter most: income and debt. She uses a simple example, someone earning Sh518,800 a month, to show how lenders calculate what remains after other bills before approving a mortgage payment. Though lenders set an upper limit on borrowing power, she chose to borrow less than she qualified for.
‘I went lower because I prefer to stay with as little debt as possible,’ she says. She explains that a mortgage payment folds together four elements; principal, interest, taxes and insurance, on top of the separate costs of a down payment and closing fees.
For buyers still living abroad, she says the process differs but remains manageable.
‘You don’t necessarily need to have anything like here,’ she says. A foreign buyer can apply for a Form W7, which functions much like a social security number for tax purposes. Down payments, however, run considerably higher for non-residents.
‘Your down payment as a foreigner might be anywhere between 25 percent to 30percent,’ she says.
Banks also require valid passports, visas, proof of income drawn from home country tax records, and bank statements covering anywhere from 12 weeks to 12 months, all meant to reassure lenders that mortgage payments will be met through the first year.