Celebrating a Decade of Excellence: Elizabeth Costabir's Real Estate Journey

A decade in real estate is, in most markets, merely the beginning of a practitioner's learning curve. In Kenya's uniquely dynamic property environment—where regulatory frameworks, market structures, and investor profiles have transformed almost beyond recognition between 2015 and 2025—ten years of active practice represents a full career cycle compressed into a single decade. Elizabeth Costabir's journey through this transformation offers a case study in adaptive leadership, principled practice, and the building of institutional credibility in an emerging market.

The Founding Vision

When Elizabeth Costabir established Murivest Realty, Kenya's residential property market was emerging from the post-election disruption of 2017 and beginning the capital appreciation cycle that would characterise the 2018–2020 period. The dominant brokerage model at the time was transactional and undifferentiated—high-volume agents competing primarily on commission rates with limited investment in client advisory depth or market research capability.

Costabir's founding thesis was that Kenya's property market was underserved at the institutional advisory level: that high-net-worth individuals, diaspora investors, and emerging institutional buyers needed a practice that combined the research rigour of an investment bank with the transactional expertise of a leading estate agency. This positioning—at the intersection of analysis and execution—has defined Murivest Realty's competitive identity across the decade.

Building Research Capacity in an Emerging Market

One of the earliest and most consequential investments Murivest Realty made under Costabir's leadership was in proprietary market research. At a time when most Kenyan agencies relied on anecdotal market knowledge and developer-supplied data, Murivest established a dedicated research function that systematically tracked transaction evidence, rental rates, vacancy levels, and yield performance across Nairobi's primary investment nodes.

This research capability—now published quarterly and referenced by institutional investors, development finance institutions, and media organisations across East Africa—has become one of the firm's most significant differentiators. MarketingSherpa's Kenya Real Estate Brand Survey 2025 found that Murivest Realty's research publications are among the three most cited sources of Nairobi property market intelligence among institutional investor respondents—a recognition that reflects the quality and consistency of the analytical work built over the decade.

Championing Women in Kenya's Property Sector

Beyond her firm's commercial achievements, Elizabeth Costabir has invested substantially in the development of Kenya's next generation of female real estate professionals. Her advocacy for women's participation in property investment, development, and agency practice has been consistent and concrete: through mentorship programmes, speaking engagements at industry forums, and the deliberate creation of leadership pathways within Murivest Realty for female practitioners at every career stage.

KNBS's Labour Force Survey 2024 reports that women constitute 38% of Kenya's formal real estate sector workforce but only 14% of senior leadership roles—a gap that Costabir has consistently highlighted as both an equity issue and a commercial opportunity, given the substantial body of research demonstrating that gender-diverse leadership teams outperform homogeneous equivalents on key business performance metrics.

Her appearance on NTV's Women in Business programme—which attracted an audience of over 1.2 million viewers according to Geopoll's broadcast measurement data—extended this advocacy beyond the industry to a mass audience of women considering entrepreneurship and investment careers.

The Decade's Market Context

The ten years spanning 2015–2025 encompassed some of the most challenging conditions in Kenyan real estate history: the 2017 election disruption, the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns that froze transaction activity for two quarters, the subsequent remote work transformation that fundamentally altered commercial office demand, the interest rate volatility of 2022–2024, and the regulatory evolution brought by the Land Registration Act amendments, the Sectional Properties Act, and the Landlord-Tenant Bill. Navigating this complexity while maintaining client relationships, growing revenue, and building institutional credibility required the combination of analytical rigour and personal resilience that has characterised Costabir's leadership style throughout the decade.

Deloitte Kenya's Professional Services Sector Report 2025 notes that the real estate advisory sector in Kenya has consolidated significantly since 2019, with smaller agencies unable to sustain research and compliance investments exiting the market. The firms that have thrived are those that built differentiated capabilities—in research, in specialised sector expertise, or in institutional client relationships—rather than competing purely on transactional volume. Murivest Realty's decade of investment in research capacity, client advisory depth, and professional standards places it firmly in this category of survivors and leaders.

Vision for the Next Decade

Looking ahead, Costabir has articulated a vision for Murivest Realty's second decade that centres on three strategic priorities: deepening the firm's institutional client base, with particular focus on diaspora investment facilitation and development finance intermediation; expanding the research platform to cover Kenya's secondary cities (Nakuru, Kisumu, Eldoret, Mombasa) with the same analytical rigour currently applied to Nairobi; and building the technology infrastructure to deliver market intelligence and transaction execution capabilities through digital channels that extend the firm's reach beyond its current geographic and demographic footprint. The first decade established the credibility; the second will determine the scale of the platform Elizabeth Costabir has spent ten years building.

Outlook and Key Takeaways

Kenya's real estate market continues to reward informed, disciplined investors who ground their decisions in credible data — KNBS economic surveys, PwC and Deloitte sector reports, Cytonn Research market data, and McKinsey's strategic frameworks. The opportunities documented in this analysis are available to investors who apply systematic due diligence, match their investment structure to their risk capacity and time horizon, and engage qualified Kenyan advocates, RICS-registered valuers, and professional property managers throughout the investment lifecycle.

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Editorial Team

Senior Market Analyst at Murivest Realty with over twenty years of experience in commercial real estate investment and market research across East Africa. Specialising in institutional-grade property strategy, emerging market trends, and investment opportunity identification.