Design and build
Construction services
Bought land in Zanzibar and want a house on it? Our own site team takes it from survey to handover — with a written budget before you spend anything on drawings.
What we build
Private homes through to small tourism developments, built for this climate rather than imported wholesale from a European catalogue.
Private villas
Three to six bedrooms, usually with a pool, built to a European specification and finished to let or to live in.
Family houses
Single-storey homes on village plots, planned around shade, airflow and the long rains.
Guesthouses
Small letting businesses — room counts, staff access and plumbing zoned for turnover from the first drawing.
Small developments
Two to six units on one plot, phased so early sales fund later construction.
How a build runs
Five stages, each with something in writing before the next one starts.
Stage 1
Site visit and survey
We check access, ground conditions, water and power, and tell you what the plot will actually support before you commit to a design.
Stage 2
Design and costing
Drawings and a line-by-line budget. Building here costs less than Europe per square metre, but imported finishes are what move the number, and we show you where.
Stage 3
Permits
We handle the local approvals, including the conservation rules if you are building inside the Stone Town area.
Stage 4
Construction
Our own site team, with staged payments tied to completed work rather than to the calendar.
Stage 5
Handover
Snagging list cleared before the final payment. You get the drawings, the approvals and the warranties.
Building for this island, not a catalogue
Salt air and long rains
Coral stone, block and reinforced concrete, with fixings and finishes chosen because they survive here — not because they were cheapest at the yard.
Off-grid where it matters
Solar, boreholes and water storage designed in from the start on plots where mains supply is unreliable or absent.
Built to let, if you want
Tell us at the design stage and it changes real decisions: room count, plumbing zoning, staff access, and which finishes survive turnover.
One team, plot to keys
If you bought the land from us, the people who surveyed it are the people who build on it. Nobody is handing blame across a contract boundary.
Have a property to sell, or a plot to build on?
Tell us what you have. We review every submission ourselves and come back to you directly.