Nigeria’s real estate market holds high hopes—Igbinoba, Jibunoh, others

Nigeria remains one of the investment havens in the world, not only because of the huge returns on investment, but also because the real estate market here is very vibrant. That was the view of experts at a media event to announce the formal presentation of The State of Lagos Housing Market report 2016 edition coming up this week Friday at Eko Hotel & Suites, Lagos.

Roland Igbinoba, executive vice chairman of Roland Igbinoba Real Foundation For Housing & Urban Development (RIRFHUD); Newton Jibunoh, chairman of the Foundation and Ronald Chagoury, MD Eko Atlantic, who jointly addressed journalists, said the report to be launched would deepen the real estate market in Lagos in particular and Nigeria in general as a result of the useful information contained therein.

“For this edition of the Report, what we have done is to dimension the market in such a way that we looked at different models all the way from housing micro finance, up to luxury residential development like what we have in the Eko Atlantic City. So, we have research covering mass housing, low income housing, mid-income housing, luxury residential development, all focused on Lagos State,” Igbinoba said.

According to him, “again, because of the kind of data we have gathered, we are expecting a very robust response from the residential real estate in Lagos. We want to make the real estate market more robust than ever in Nigeria, starting with Lagos. For this reason, the 2016 edition of the Report will be useful to all.”

Expressing appreciation to the Lagos State government for its cooperation during the exercise in terms of information supply, Igbinoba said that agencies and departments of government played appreciable roles in the execution of the task.

On the benefits of the Report to stakeholders, he said it was presented in such a way that everybody could find it useful.

“In terms of the presentation of the book, we tried to put a lot of pictures or info-graphics to capture what is happening in the industry. The presentation, we believe, will make it interesting for people to read. It will be useful to real estate developers and others also. We put Lagos into clusters where we categorised various markets, for instance, Ikoyi, this is what happens; Victoria Island; etc. Students, lecturers and foreign investors who want to know how Lagos real estate market is doing will also find the Report very useful. It is a reference book,” Igbinoba said.

Jibunoh also assured that the Report would help the organisation to plan for the future, adding, “we are going to look at the achievements recorded since the last report was published and then look at what is happening today to determine whether there are positive growths. The Report would not only benefit developers or practitioners in the real estate market, but also everybody that has something to do with building. Building is about the first most important need of man even before food. This is because you have to be somewhere before talking about food. Again, beyond the presentation, we would also be interested in knowing what happens to the market in the next 10 years,” he said.

Chagoury commended the efforts put into the production of the Report, hoping that stakeholders in the real estate business would find the report useful. He also said that the real estate business in Nigeria has continued to grow and also shows signs of better days ahead.

In his remarks, Olusesan Ogunyooye, brand communication manager AMFacilities, said his company decided to buy into the project because of its credible nature and the huge benefits it holds not only for Lagos State, but also for the country in general.

“We saw the need to support a worthy cause. We are convinced by the seriousness of those behind the project. We were presented with convincing data and we believed that the work would bring a lot of activities to deepen the real estate market. A sector that is said to be contributing about 6 percent of the total Gross Domestic Products (GDP) is a great one,” Ogunyooye said.

RIRFHUD is a corporate social responsibility effort and a non-governmental initiative aimed at providing information and analytics to the residential real estate market in Nigeria. The Foundation is strictly set up as an institution for social capital, advocacy and policy making towards the development of the Nigerian housing market and ultimately the provision of affordable housing to the citizenry. The Foundation successfully published “The State of the Lagos Housing Market 2009” which was a first of its kind.

CHUKA UROKO