Lekki Pearl’s value proposition raises buyer interest in affordable luxury

I n many ways, developers raise interest in their developments and also stimulate buyer demand. One of such ways is through compelling value proposition which Lekki Pearl Estate has on offer for buyers. Apart from the new technology that has been employed in the construction work on this estate, the developers have also given much consideration for buyer demand and affordability by bringing the entry level for the purchase of these houses, thereby making luxury not only accessible but also affordable.

Developed by Alpha Mead Development Company (AMDC)—a relatively young real estate investment and development firm— as part of efforts at closing the housing demand-supply gap in Nigeria, Lekki Pearl is a moderate mid-income community comprising 112 housings units of various house-types located in the upscale, highly urbanizing Lekki Peninsula. AMDC is one of the business units of Alpha Mead Facilities & Management Services Limited (AMFacilities) and it is in the property market fully equipped to break the affordability jinx and bring down house prices.

The company has deployed a new building technology known as Modular Building System or Formwork Panels in the construction of Lekki Pearl and Femi Akintunde, AMFacilities CEO, says the new technology is aimed to not only reduce cost, but also increase the speed of construction. To make this happen, the company has entered into strategic partnership with Wall-Ties & Forms International (WTF), a recognized world leader in the formwork industry that produces and ships over 30 million ties a year and over 200,000 aluminum concrete forms to Brazil, Singapore, Mexico and 42 other countries of the world.

“Our partnership with WTF is one of our strategies for exploring innovative technology to build quality houses, and lower the entry level for middle-income home buyers from the current market average of N6 million to as low as N250, 000 monthly, without initial large deposit or collateral”, Akintunde said.

The Modular Building System, also called Formwork Panels, are aluminum panels that ensure strict quality control and consistent building quality. The formworks systems ease construction process, drive down cost of building by over 20 percent and increase the speed of construction to as much as delivering a house every week post foundation.

“Our aim is to lower the entry level for home ownership to just guaranteed regular income from where the monthly N250,000 installments can be paid; we want to help middle income Nigerians who are unable to raise the large capital most developers demand as deposit, or are unable to build due to the large capital involved”, he assured.

Damola Akindolire, Executive Director, Real Estate at Alpha Mead, noted that in Nigeria, about 20- 30 percent of construction cost goes into waste such as broken ties, damaged blocks, plywood, bamboo, personnel cost, adding that costs were also incurred from extended period of conventional building systems, and poor finishing.

“We are not just saying we want to drive down cost of owning a quality home; our focus is to lower the market entry barriers for home buyers through the use of a technology that can help eliminate wastes that would have been built into the construction cost”, he explained.

“The formworks we are using on our site have the capacity of eliminating wastes and saving time. For example, our solutions can build a house in about seven days with an average of 6-10 personnel without the use of cranes or heavy duty machinery. That means we can eliminate the cost of damaged building materials and pass that saving to our customers. Also, we can save the cost of paying personnel for about 50 days, if we had employed the conventional building methods”, he added.

He assured that AMDC was a dynamic real estate development company with a current capacity to use technology to deliver up to 10,000 homes to middle income Nigerians in the next five years