Data Methodology

This page explains the general evidence used across Cheru’s listings, Areas and market-information surfaces. A specific Research publication has its own reporting period, sample and limitations.

Sources represented in the product include active property listings, property and development information submitted to Cheru, canonical location records, administrator-maintained location guide rates, user-supplied Estimate details, and structured editorial or Research material.

These are different evidence types. Displayed listings and submitted data are not evidence of a completed transaction. Aggregates are derived from the records identified on the relevant surface.

Property records are mapped into common fields used by search: listing type, property type, canonical location and microlocation, price, availability, bedrooms, bathrooms and size where supplied. Off-plan records may also include unit configurations.

Land submitted to Cheru Estimate is normalised to acres; built-up and unit areas use square metres. Public market metrics omit unavailable values rather than treating them as zero. The Estimate engine may infer a built-up area in specifically identified cases; that is an Estimate assumption, not a change to the source listing.

Imports use record identifiers and update behaviour to reduce repeated records, while public area counts also collapse repeated property IDs. Administrative review can address further duplicates. Cheru does not claim that every duplicate across independently submitted or differently described properties is automatically detected.

Cheru uses canonical location identities and parent-child matching. A broad market such as Karen and a smaller place such as Miotoni can therefore appear at different levels, with the smaller place matched within its parent market where the stored relationship supports it.

These product levels describe search and market groupings; they do not by themselves assert an official administrative boundary.

A published listing is a record available for discovery. It does not, merely by being published, mean that Cheru has verified ownership, title, physical condition or every submitted fact.

For public Area guide metrics, “verified” narrowly means the underlying guide-rate record is marked verified and active in Cheru’s maintained rate system. Source-confidence and last-updated fields describe evidence quality and recency where displayed; they do not amount to title or inspection verification.

Asking price means the price requested or advertised for a property. Transaction price means the price at which a completed transaction occurred.

Statistics derived from Cheru listings represent asking prices, not completed sale or transaction prices. A verified guide rate is also not automatically a completed transaction price. A Research report may use other evidence only where that report documents it.

Area pages surface location-rate metrics only from records whose status is active and whose verification flag is true. These are described as verified guide rates: directional rate information maintained for a location, not an official market value or a transaction index.

Area guide metrics take the median of the positive, finite midpoints in the matching verified active location-rate records. For an even number of records, the median is the mean of the two central values. Land is displayed per acre; apartment and house guides are displayed per square metre.

Other products use product-specific methods. Cheru Estimate, for example, constructs a low, midpoint and high from its applicable engine evidence and confidence rules; it does not reuse the Area median as a universal calculation.

Different Cheru products apply different validation rules. Area guide medians exclude non-positive and non-finite values but do not apply a separate statistical outlier-rejection model. Cheru Estimate applies input plausibility and evidence-quality rules. Users should not assume one outlier rule governs every metric.

Freshness depends on the evidence: listings have an availability status; guide records can have a last-updated date; Research uses a stated, frozen reporting period; News has a publication date.

Technical caching controls how soon a stored response is requested again. It does not make the underlying source evidence newer and is not presented as a source-data date.

Cheru prefers to omit a metric or state “limited market evidence” or “insufficient data” rather than display KSh 0 or create an average unsupported by records. Not every property type or location has enough evidence for every guide or Estimate.

To report a suspected error, email info@cheru.co.ke with the URL, the property, location or report concerned, what appears wrong, and supporting context where available. Cheru does not promise a fixed response time on this page.

Market evidence can be incomplete, stale, incorrectly submitted or unevenly distributed. Listing availability and asking prices can change. Guide information should be considered alongside current property-specific checks and appropriate professional advice.

This general methodology does not replace report-specific methodology. For a publication at /research/[slug], its stated sample, reporting period, calculations and limitations take precedence when interpreting that report. Browse Cheru Research, Insights, or read how Cheru Estimate works.