Northcourt: Growing on strength of partnerships and resilience

October 2018 marks five years of Northcourt doing business in the Nigerian real estate sector, and while it seems like yesterday that we began the journey, the many moments of pain experienced in birthing the vision remain very vivid and unforgettable.

Northcourt was established with two goals; to create an indigenous world-class professional real estate company and to increase the level of transparency in Nigeria and West Africa’s real estate market. In five years of existence, Northcourt has been constantly recognized for achieving both locally and on the continent.

In today’s fast-paced and hyper-connected society, the customers’ preferences are frequently changing and improving in sophistication. We believe these three paradigms we hold have been good to keep and will be good enough to take us the next five years:

Adaptability

Barrack Obama credited a good portion of his success at the 2008 Presidential Elections to understanding the “lay of the land”. That is, going beyond the theories associated with politics to thoroughly understanding what the people needed and wanted. As a growing firm, we have endeavored to adjust our service offerings to meet and exceed client expectations. Our standards have also risen quite consistently in lockstep with global benchmarks.

At one point, taking on development projects was a no-brainer. We had (and still have) the competence, margins were good and clients were pleased with our output. However, exchange rate fluctuations experienced in 2016/2017 caused a spike in (largely imported)construction materials prices that few clients could stomach. In the end, we decided to be more selective in our development engagements, opting to take a more consulting role in most instances.

Resilience

Resilience as a mindset has in itself kept us resilient in different economic seasons. Northcourt was birthed during a boom, but we didn’t deem low prices and high demand a constant for a day. In our engagements, we find that client demands increase in tandem with their exposure, usually facilitated by technology and travel. This has raised the bar for what is deemed acceptable service even in real estate. And while we have introduced some products to increase the convenience enjoyed by our customers, we find that other ideas may prove unworkable until the right people or resources come into play.

A certain amount of resilience is required to push on while we wait for the necessary factors to align in our favour. We’ve had to keep at it, building the other parts of the business in the meantime, staying true to the vision, being mindful of the opportunities and delivering as much value as we can. Eventually, resilience pays off when stakeholders within and outside Nigeria’s real estate industry acknowledge our efforts.

We find that finance, strategy, active reporting, branding and regulatory compliance standards remain key pillars of any sustainable enterprise. Keeping these standards front and centre of our activities has commended us in good and bad times. Resilience for us has also meant embracing the costs of progress, one of which is letting go of old ideas and taking on new ones.

Partnerships

Building anything of value takes a team following a well-defined vision. It also means recognising that while attainment may cost more than one is willing to give, it will reward in more ways than one expects. This also requires responding quickly to the ever-changing realities of the services industry. The firm has grown on by being lean which has meant a special appreciation for working smart and efficiently. This would have been impossible without our strong partnerships.

The partnership that exists amongst the executive leadership has been a single most powerful weapon. It takes skilled individuals with the right mindset to consistently deploy organisational systems and develop new ones. That is, individuals willing to take on the culture and values shared by the firm. Building a team with similar core attributes is critical to steering the ship in the right direction. The firm is on a drive to raise the bar of excellence in service delivery which has led to the introduction of new service lines and the opening of our Abuja office. By and large, the sustained patronage of good customers is a fair indicator of market acceptance – and such customers are central to the growth of any enterprise.

We consider ourselves yet to have scratched the surface of our vision– increasing the transparency of Nigeria’s real estate market, and are in no doubts as to the enormity of the journey ahead of us. There are standards to raise, products to deliver and fresh perspectives to introduce.

CHUKA UROKO