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By Maduka Nweke, [email protected]
The Managing Director/CEO, Mr. Adekunle Abdul, has said that the economic meltdown in the country has affected the development of real estate drastically.
He said that the company was particularly affected by the increase in the cost of doing business generally. The cost of raw materials and diesel which some people may being be asking how it affects the real estate have an impact on the cost of development because virtually everything done in real estate has direct or indirect connection with diesel.
While fielding questions on some of the challenge in the course of doing business in real estate, Abdul said funding remains a big issue. He said to get a loan from an average bank, you will expect to pay 20 per cent interest. If you take N1 billion, you are already indebted to N400 million then you can calculate the profit.
Again the sensitivity to price adjustment is alarming. You wake up one day, you hear the dollar has risen to this and before sunset same day, it has changed again.
He noted that for business to normalise again, the government has to put in place policies that will encourage operators in the sub-sector to do more for the growth of the country’s gross domestic product.
According to him, with friendly policies and incentives in place, real estate developers can grow the GDP of the country above 50 percent.
Explaining the aim and objective of his group into real estate business in 2028, Metro Group MD/CEO said, “The idea of providing community solutions was conceived out of frustration of people in the diaspora.
“Our aim is to provide community services with every necessary facility and infrastructure in place, and also to bridge the gap between fraudulent engineers and developers and to make people more comfortable to invest their resources in Nigeria.
Our first five- year goal and objective was to provide 300 housing units and three retail outlets. We also have the Metropolis Square which is just like Supermarkets, Sports Centres and others “We are providing these houses for the typically middle class, and it has to be affordable. We have done some research and we have been able to accomplish at least 80 percent of our goals. We should have completed 100 percent but we lost time due to COVID. We lost about one and half years within that five years space and the targeted 300 housing units dropped to 250.
“As of today, we have delivered two of our housing estates and the third one is under construction. We have a sports centre which is under construction also. We bought a plot of land between 10 and 12 million Naira when we came here in 2018. Now, the cost of a plot of land here is N70 million within the space of one and half years. As we know, development is the driving factor of the cost of land, and this shows that investors have really appreciated our development in this area.
“We decided to move from being affordable to being slightly above the affordable benchmark. We struggle to provide good prices for individuals. As for salary earners, it depends on how much you earn. That’s why we have different payment structures.
“Our symbolism is to provide the best communities. Our goal is to be better than any community you can think of.”
However, it was painstaking as of the past three years. Our strategy has been brand building and brand trust. We don’t promise what we cannot deliver.
For low cost housing, it is for people beyond minimum wage level. It is the responsibility of the government to provide low cost houses for low income earning groups.
“While the government focuses on provision of low cost houses for low income groups which is their major responsibility, developers are expected to provide affordable houses to the middle class of the society”, Metro Group of companies’ boss stated.
