Two kinds of fund trade on the Nairobi Securities Exchange alongside the companies. They arrive in the daily pricelist like any other counter, which is why they tend to go unnoticed: nobody looking for a property fund thinks to search a list of companies by sector.

The ETFs

GLD — New Gold Issuer tracks the gold price, backed by physical gold held for the fund. One unit is a small fixed quantity of gold. It pays nothing at all: the entire return is whatever gold does, in shillings, which also means it carries the dollar-shilling rate inside it.

SMWF — Satrix MSCI World Feeder tracks a global developed-market index. It is the most straightforward way on the NSE to own something that is not Kenyan.

The point of both is that they are the only listed route to an asset the Kenyan market does not otherwise offer. Neither is an income product.

The REITs

Five are listed, all I-REITs — income REITs, which hold completed property and distribute the rent, as opposed to D-REITs which build.

  • FAHR — ILAM Fahari I-REIT
  • ACORN — Acorn Investment Management I-REIT
  • LAPR — Laptrust Imara I-REIT
  • ALP — ALP Industrial I-REIT
  • TRFC — TRIFIC Green USD I-REIT

A REIT's return has two halves: the distribution it pays out of rent, and whatever the unit price does. Listed property in Kenya has had a hard decade on the second half, so the distribution yield on its own has repeatedly flattered the actual experience of holding one.

Listed is not the same as liquid. Of the five, two have no price history at all in the daily pricelist we collect, and at least one trades rarely enough that the useful thing to show is the date it last traded rather than a price. A counter nobody is trading is a counter you may not be able to sell when you want to, and that is a real cost that no yield figure shows.

Why they are not ranked with the funds

On Where to put money, money market funds, saccos, bills and bonds share a column headed what a year keeps after tax. The ETFs and REITs sit in their own section below it, deliberately.

For an ETF, there is nothing to put in that column. NewGold pays no income. Its return is a price movement, and a price movement is not a yield — putting a number there would mean inventing a forecast.

For a REIT, the distribution is only part of the answer, and the Kenyan tax treatment is genuinely not a single number: a registered REIT is itself exempt, and what is withheld from a unitholder depends on the unitholder. So the distribution is shown as declared, with no after-tax figure — the same rule applied to a fund whose tax rate we do not know.

Ranking them alongside a Treasury bill would mean inventing a comparison that does not exist. It would also, reliably, put the riskiest thing on the page at the top.

If you are considering one

  • Check when it last traded, not just its price. A stale price is not a price you can get.
  • Read the distribution history, several years of it. One good payout is not a yield.
  • Know which half you are buying for. If it is income, the distribution is the product and the price is noise. If it is the property market recovering, say so to yourself, because that is a different bet with a different time horizon.
  • For the ETFs, know what you are exposed to. Gold in shillings is two positions, not one.

All seven appear on Ipahco's company pages with their price history like any other counter, and in their own section on the comparison page with their distribution where we have it.