I just finished what is supposed to be a national annual real estate conference at Lagos Business School (

The presenters did justice to their papers; they were some of the finest brains home and abroad. My issue with the conference is the fact that we had no actionable communiqué at the end of it all, government attendance was very poor. Even the Minister of Environment/Housing could not make it in person, she sent a low power delegation. Yet the whole conference concluded that Government has a lot to do in making affordable housing achievable. I can not see the essence of such a gathering with an actionable communiqué. You ca what I mean?

Be that as it may, listed below are some of the things I took away from the two day conference:

• We have between 12 – 16 million housing deficit in the country
• We need about 12trillion naira to clear the housing deficit
• 30-50million of Nigerians live in the slum
• Hitherto lone ranger style of solving the housing problem can not adequately address the situation now. Lone range is the individualistic construction approach.
• The projects (e.g. FESTAC, JAKANDE, SHAGARI, MARWA, OTEDOLA ESTATES) will not solve the problem either largely because they are not sustainable.

The solution is in our ability to evolve a sustainable all-inclusive systematic approach. This will involve the following:

1. Government as the provider of the enabling environment in terms of laws/legislations, subsidies, incentives and infrastructures

2. The financial institutions providing the needed funding   (long tenure and single digit) and

3. The developers and other players in the sector

The newly inaugurated FHA (Federal Housing Authority) is said to be doing something about that, General Reis and Dr. Timothy Nubi were well represented at the event. They seem to be determined to achieve something with 10,000 houses in 2years and some other laudable targets. They are also working on how to improve our maintenance culture as a people.

I always like to be part of the solution. So for me and our team at REALTY POINT LIMITED, Prime Estates Phases 1 & 2 will be our focus for the next 2years. Through these estates we plan to contribute a minimum of 3,500 housing units to the crusade of clearing the deficit.

God helping us, we shall achieve it.

What do you plan to do?

I will be in Dubai from this Tuesday October 23 to Saturday October 27 for a conference/expo. I promise to feed you in on my findings from the world’s current hot bed of real estate investment.

Click here to learn more about Prime Estates or REALTY POINT LIMITED: www.primeestatesng.com

God bless Nigeria!

This is the beginning and I congratulate you if you’re reading this at anytime in the life of this blog. It shows you care about knowing what informed the creation of this blog.

I have a dream for real estate investment in Nigeria, a dream am willing to pay a commensurate price for. My dream has three parts to it, namely

1) To help tenants become landlords. A Punch Newspaper publication quoted the Managing Director of FMBN to have said Nigeria is about 16million houses in deficit and about 104million Nigerians live in rented or substandard apartments. i would like to be a part of changing that statistics for the better.

2) To create low budget real estate investment vehicles/opportunities for all and sundry. Imagine being able to investment in real estate like you were investing in shares with from as little as N1,000.00 a month.  While this is not a big deal for investors outside of a developing country like Nigeria, it is difficult to come by here. Over here, it is believed that it takes a money bag to invest in real estate. One of the Nigerian banks just introduced the first R.E.I.T scheme to the country a month ago.  I plan to make such investment opportunity become a common place thing.

3) The last thing I would like to do is to align myself with real estate professionals, investors and other industry players towards performance enhancement and profit optimization.

So help me God!

Sounds like a pledge, isn’t it?

May be it really a pledge to my self chosen entrepreneurial path.