AMDC flaunts technology in affordable housing at Lekki Pearl Estate
In a most spectacular way, Alpha Mead Development Company (AMDC) demonstrated recently what technology is capable of doing in terms of affordable housing development with the completion of the show-house at its 112-unit Lekki Pearl Estate in Lagos.
This feat which was unveiled at a moderate ceremony that had in attendance all stakeholders on the project, including the home subscribers, financial partners and development contractors is part of the company’s quest to deliver its projected 10,000 affordable and quality homes for mid-income Nigerians by 2020,
“We have been able to demonstrate to the Nigerian built environment is the role technology can play in the affordable and quality mix of housing development”, Femi Akintunde, MD/CEO of the company enthused enthused at the unveiling event.
“Usually, one of the issues is the thinking that affordability impacts negatively on quality. But by embracing technology, housing development can be at cheaper rates while quality and precision can still be achieved to give home owners comfort, making the situation a win-win for both customers and the environment”, he added.
Akintunde explained that, “by embracing technology like we have done on this project, we have reduced material wastages to near-zero level, saved the environment from deforestation as our technology does not use wood in construction, and ultimately will save our customers time because, moving forward, our goal is to efficiently maximize the technology to deliver houses in on average of 10 days, post foundation”.
AMDC, he disclosed, has focused its development strategies on the mid-income class because they are the drivers of the economy, and currently in their productive stages, adding that out of the reported 17 million housing deficit, an estimated four million gap exists in the middle income class.
He noted that mid-income earners are bankable individuals who should be able to have decent and quality homes, but the current high entry level of the market has made this dream impossible.
“With an entry level of N6 million equity requirement in today’s housing market, only few members of this class are able to exit the rent market in their productive years. Self-building is also not an option because of the level of stress, wastage and time required to build a home for oneself in Nigeria today.
“So what we have done is to structure a payment plan that suites the lifestyle and income level of these Nigerians such that in addition to a world-class building technology, we are currently building homes for mid-income Nigerians for as low as N250,000 per month”, he explained.
Akintunde also lamented the current housing situation in the country, noting that with technologies like form works which the company is using, government at various levels was expected to start putting serious thoughts into social housing delivery because a substantial part of the housing deficit falls within the social housing space.
Damola Akindolire, Executive Director, Real Estate at AMDC, noted that execution had been the bane of delivering affordable and quality homes in the middle income market, saying, “everyone talks about developing affordable homes for this market but execution is a big issue”.
Continuing, he said, “the truth is that it is a pretty tough call to build quality and functional houses like we are doing and still sell them at affordable rates with low entry point such as N250, 000 monthly. But like I have said at different fora, AMDC is not just a development company; we are a home solution provider that understands the end-to-end process of the housing supply chain and is able to identify these bottlenecks to the advantage of our customers. And I think with this project coming on stream, we have been able to prove to the market that those words are not just fine marketing slogans, we mean them”.
CHUKA UROKO