DescriptionStudies on self-built informal housing also known as Informal Homestead Subdivision (IFHS) in peri-urban areas are widely associated with developing countries, a form of housing that originates as illegal occupations on un-serviced plots. In the USA, ?informal housing production embraced the trailer homes, with self-help home improvement on developed plots? IFHS are often situated in low-cost land markets and associated with low-income households with an urge to own their own homes, despite the limiting factors associated with accessing financing Ward and Peters (2007). They identify a research gap by stipulating that urban growth into peri-urban rural areas would be an important area for ?planning and research in developed and less developed countries?.
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These issues are founded on social and economic phenomena of informal housing ownership and its growth in peri-urban rural areas of Kenya. That is what Ward and Peters (2007) describe as low-cost land markets on the urban periphery and very low income households with no access to formal finance.
The phenomenon makes it a vital subject for research and leads to the research questions:
1) How financial factors impact households? decisions to self-build their homes?
2) How non-financial factors impact households? decisions to self-build their home?