Houses in Kigali: The Good, The Bad, and the DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT THING
What doesn’t kill you makes you… not dead yet?
House hunting in Kigali: is it a time-consuming, life-defeating activity that will make you question your sanity or an exercise in hilarity? It’s all about your perspective…
This is a retrospective post because during the time we were house-hunting we could ZERO PERCENT see the humor to the situation (and, the internet was exceptionally shitty, so no photo uploads). Now that we live in what can be considered a catch of a house here, I feel I can look back on this entire process and… well, maybe not laugh, but at least *not* cry.
Cry I did, though—several times—in frustration with agents, landlords, and furniture selected for its brutal attack on all that is holy.
Here’s my guide to Finding a House that Doesn’t Suck in Kigali, v.1
The Neighborhood
Establish your parameters for the type of neighborhood you want to live in. Many expats have historically focused on neighborhoods like Kimihurura, Kiyovu, Kacyiru, Rugando, and Gacuriro, though Kibagabaga, Gisimenti, Remera and Nyarutarama are getting more acceptable depending on your comfort with distance from things and the size of house you want. Living in Kigali has an okay intro to each neighborhood. Honestly, many of the posts haven’t been updated for some time so the best option is to just visit the neighborhoods yourself by moto or on foot if possible.
We wanted a small house with a small roof (HA), within walking distance to grocery stores and other amenities, that would be relatively convenient (10 mins moto or less) for Jed to get to work from and had a view. Since nearly every neighborhood is constructed on a hill, you can almost guarantee a view; the question is “what do you want to look at?” and for me that was easy - sunset. Because let’s face it, I’m not a morning person so sunrise probably isn’t going to be fully appreciated by me.
Here is a really really important factor when you look for a place to live: is it on a paved street? This may very well be the difference between having electricity & water & internet some days. Our friends who lived on unpaved streets experience outages much more frequently than we do.
The House
Our personal preference was for older houses (pre-genocide or just after, but either way, the 90’s) with large, open spaces, built-in cabinetry and large, untinted windows. You’ll notice very swiftly that Rwandans have a propensity for privacy that has never been properly explained to me; but anyways, most newer construction has small, closed off rooms with dark tinted windows and gigantic, completely extraneous roof systems that are 100% status symbols and 0% practical (bar that they shed water).
Our wish list:
-White interior with light/bright spaces
-Guest bedroom & office space
-1000 USD/month or less, OR
-1500 USD/month MAX if there was a separate rent-able space
-Simple furnishings & light fixtures
-Sunset view & beautiful porch
-Laundry machine
Optional but encouraged:
-Sheltered laundry area
-Established garden
-Bathtubs in the bathrooms
-Separate pantry
Yes, that’s a lot. But I had seen many examples of simple houses with beautiful views that people were sharing, in neighborhoods that had beautiful views, amenities and great gardens, for less than $700/month. So I knew I wasn’t asking for something impossible.
A note on pricing:
Neither of us are working for the UN or have a well-paid job at an NGO. So no housing allowance for us - we’re relying on Jed’s salary and whatever I can pull in freelancing locally. If you are the type of expat who gets paid a generous housing allowance and relocation fee, screw you FOR REAL. You are all fucking up the housing market in Rwanda with your ‘I don’t care, I’ll just pay whatever the landlord asks’ and that pisses me off. Stop reading this and go sit in a dark corner contemplating how difficult you have made life for people who are not you. It’s an insane privilege to be able to live in a house in Kigali and you have made that unreachable for normal people (including middle-class Rwandans.) /end rant
House Hunting Round 1
When we first arrived in June, I took just a few days to myself to get over the jet lag and then I started meeting ex-pats and asking for their advice on getting an agent. Using an agent is usually how things are done here and they typically collect either a % of the rent as a fee, or charge a fixed fee ($200 US is typical). Right away, a guy from Jed’s office suggested someone named Gilbert (pronounced the French way). I got in touch and he arranged to pick me up in a car and take me around Kigali to look at some potential rentals the next day. I agreed, and the house hunting adventure began.
My first day was not the worst - I managed to see one place that I thought would actually meet the requirements. Okay, it didn’t have a view or any appliances and it did have tinted windows and was painted red and brown in some areas and it did not have an established garden… but OTHERWISE, it was actually kind of fine.
Unfortunately the day went a bit south from there, as none of the other listings met even basic criteria. I began to sense that my tastes and those of my future Rwandan landlords was *slightly* different…
I was noticing a certain… discrepancy in spacial awareness in some of the homes I visited. These were primarily new-build homes that had been constructed and furnished with the Expat in mind. There was the sink in the living room (maybe practical, but also, a little awkward.) There were the uneven risers on a completely unnecessary tiled spiral staircase. There was the LED light-up shower. The plastic encased mattress. And of course color combinations & patterns that made me question whether the directive ‘simple furnishings’ could have been misconstrued or had a different cultural meaning.
Not to be judgy, but I didn’t really feel that any of the places I viewed were right for me. Gilbert promised that the last listing would blow my mind, however, even though it was in Kibagabaga - a neighborhood I could not pronounce let alone point to on a map. It turned out to be a wild 45 minute ride through rush-hour traffic at the end of the day to what became embedded in my memory as the house a James Bond villain in the 70’s would have lived in had James Bond ever made a movie in Kigali.
Dr. Evil 70’s vibes.
Truthfully, I half-heartedly viewed a few more places during my first 3 weeks but was so disheartened that I was kind of relieved when Jed offered to take up the search during his lunch breaks with another agent. I gave Gilbert a break and went back to Canada to to sort out our Toronto apartment in anticipation of moving back to Kigali within a few weeks.
Well, that turned into a few months but eventually I did make it back to Kigali. This time, we were living with our friends Jen & Ben in their house in Rugando. This was near to Chez Lando, Ndoli (the ‘italian’ grocery store), Sawa City and a number of other convenient places. As we got to know the neighborhood and walked around with Keza we realized that it would actually be the ideal hood for us. It was close to Jed’s work (a 3-5 min moto), close to restaurants and cafes, easy to get motos, and close to loads of grocery stores, markets and banks. It was also easy to get to the airport and Kimironko market. We decided to narrow the search and eliminate any places outside of Kimihurura, Kacyiru or Rugando.
House Hunting Round 2
Oh, the adventures. I had agents call me and then, when I answered, breathe heavily into the phone without revealing their names or purposes. I had agents call me and tell me they had found me many new beautiful homes, all to discover that they were the same five “beautiful homes” I had rejected the previous day with a different agent. I had agents utterly ignore my request to only show me homes that were *actually* for rent and not just empty without word of the landlord. (These types of homes quite regularly dot the landscape - agents go around talking to the guards and get the scoop on which homes might potentially be up for grabs, I’m guessing with a little ‘finder’s fee’ incentive for the guards who allow the agents and their clients inside to take a look.)
We actually found the perfect home in Kimihurura this way at one point. Jed and I visited with his agent, who then promised to arrange a meeting between us and the landlady. On three separate occasions, we were told to meet at the house to meet the landlady on a particular day at a particular time, all to arrive and find that neither agent nor landlady was there. After attempting to contact the landlady directly by phone several times, we finally gave up. That was this place:
Now, in a stroke of utter coincidence, just a few months later I received an Airbnb photography request. As I looked at the map, I thought ‘that place looks familiar.’ Sure enough, it was the exact same house - but a cute British couple had moved in and utterly transformed it. I seethed with jealousy and resentment - HOW ON EARTH had they get the place that should have been ours?
Sophie, who became one of my good friends in Kigali, explained that she too had had a nightmare trying to find a simple, light-filled home in a good area, so when she saw this one she badgered the guard until he gave her the landlady’s address. Sophie and her husband and their agent drove to the landlady’s home, offered her rent on the spot in exchange for the keys, drove her around to go to the bank and sign the paperwork and basically didn’t let her out of sight until they had a rental agreement in place.
THAT IS WHAT IT TAKES SOMETIMES.
If you’re wondering what on earth I saw in this place, check out how Sophie and Rowley transformed it with prints, a bit of paint, and some basic repairs. THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN MINE.
I still haven’t fully let that go, as you can tell.
ANYWAYS.
The search continued. I felt that our welcome as unpaying tenants at Jen & Ben’s place was wearing thin as the weeks passed and still we hadn’t found a place. Things were becoming untenable since we had just recently decided to adopt Keza, but weren’t allowed to keep her inside J+B’s compound. Keza was staying with a few of Jed’s colleagues who lived a short walk away, but she was incredibly attached to us and caused chaos and destruction every time we’d leave her tied up to the porch after walking & feeding her.
We decided for the sake of our new bb doggo to take a temporary room in Kimihurura with a South African expat named Keightley while I doggedly kept up the search.
I continued to view gems such as these:
I was literally giving up hope. I thought that if I didn’t find something by October, I would just fly home.
I actually had an agent show me this as a selling feature: yes, that is a bathroom hidden behind a closet door. A secret bathroom, if you will.
The masterpiece of Rwandan Interior Decor, however, must be this house:
OH LAWD HE COMIN’
“ugly can’t kill you, ugly can’t kill you, ugly can’t kill you…”
We then found another ‘mostly perfect’ listing in Kimihurura. It was a bright & cheerful yellow house with newly painted & re-tiled interior, a sunset view, and convenient location. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, we would have to rent out a room to afford it but figured it was worth it. We arranged to meet the landlord to go over a lease. We prepared the lease. We made sure our money was ready. We met the landlord, and… it all went to shit. The landlord refused to budge on his price of $1500 USD/month when we knew other places nearby were going for $12-1400. Nothing could make him change his mind, not even the prospect of cold hard USD cash (which, technically, is illegal for landlords to request as payment for rentals in Rwanda - a little tip for you there).
Finally, the moment of triumph
I was lying in bed contemplating how much I was not enjoying my life one day when I got a WhatsApp from Gilbert. My very first agent in Kigali. He said he found a very promising listing. At this point I was not enthusiastic or optimistic in any way, but hope springs eternal so I hopped on a moto and met him at KG 599.
Behold, our new home:
This house had EVERYTHING. It was in Rugando, on the same (paved) street as Sole Luna. It was within walking distance to Simba, Ndoli, and Sawa City. It was a 3-minute moto from Jed’s work. Kigali Water’s office was just down the street so we could always get maintenance people out when needed. It was bright, light, open, spacious, clean, had a pantry, a covered laundry area, AND it had a separate, rentable unit with its own kitchen, entry & everything. It had a garden overflowing with tomatoes and amaranth. A view for days. IT HAD A PIANO.
I knew this was the place the moment I arrived.
Now, to get over the next hurdle: meeting with and negotiating with the landlady. This was going to be at the upper limit of our budget as a sharable space; the landlady had originally set the price at 1800/month. After months sitting empty, she finally got convinced to lower the price to $1600 by Gilbert. Jed and I had to work on her to get her down to $1500. We already had a potential tenant to share the space with - our friend Andrew who was going to pay $500 to rent the annex.
We arranged to meet on the weekend and after nearly an hour of going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth… we finally got her to agree to $1500. Honestly this involved me going out to cry on the porch for a bit while things got heated. I was not giving up though - it was this house or go back to Canada. I had wasted a month of my life doing nothing but visit ugly homes in bad areas and I could not take it anymore - I needed to unpack my bags and settle down for a while.
Once she agreed, we paid the deposit and got the keys. I paid Gilbert his fee (he earned his $200) but, while he was also supposed to get a fee from the landlady she refused to pay him because he didn’t get her the price she wanted. I felt bad for him and gave him an extra $50. He arranged for someone to come clean the house in advance of our move in and generally acted like a total pro.
After a few months of repairs, re-covering the cushions, cleaning all the curtains, getting new furniture where needed and rearranging everything to our liking, here’s how the place has turned out:
We’re so happy we finally have a gorgeous space and a beautiful patio to enjoy the sunset on - it makes the tough parts of living here worthwhile to enjoy this little slice of tropical heaven.