Major Real Estate Investors Propose Ways to Unlock Values

Ayodeji Ake

A group of major real estate practitioners have given recipes for investing in property developments and bridging the deficit in residential and commercial housing in Nigeria.

Essentially, they advocated investment boost and collaboration to increase residential housing and commercial development in the country.

The operators, who are big-ticket property investors, spoke at the recent Property Investment Conference (PRINVEST 2022) organised by BusinessDay in Lagos with the theme: “Dream Residential Communities, Closing the Gap”. The conference was designed to proffer solutions that will address the housing deficit, highlight necessary reforms to develop infrastructure and provide solutions to mortgage insufficiency in Nigeria.

Leading the pack of experts at one of the event’s panel discussions, Co-founder and Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Purple, Obinna Onunkwo, spoke eloquently about how Purple had been able to navigate the terrain hitherto avoided by many in the industry, assuring that if value is created in real estate development, an investor would make his money. Particularly, he revealed innovative concept that Purple adopted and one, which worked for it. According to him, desirous investors could adopt same and create wealth.

“There is money to be made, there is value to be created and that’s what drives us as a platform. When we did Maryland mall, our first major project, people thought we were crazy, because we said, you can’t be building destination location in Nigeria, you can do it in South Africa, you can do it in Mauritius but it’s a local one, we have traffic issues in Lagos, we have approval issues in Lagos. So, you have to do something that fits the market, which is why we developed for the first time in Nigeria the concept of “small format retail”: when you build a mall, instead of spreading it across the ground, you stack it up and you put it in a location that is easier for people to access without traffic and stuff, and Maryland mall has been a huge success and we are replicating that across Lagos,” Onunkwo narrated.

Earlier, Chief Operating Officer, Purple Proptech Limited, Ope Adetiba, hinted on the plan by Purple to introduce home ownership arrangement by way of Fractions. According to him, Fractions solves the issue of access on the buyer and seller side and provides a level-playing field as well as gives an easier path to exiting real estate transactions.

As part of the plan under the Fractions model, Adetiba revealed, Purple would be launching home ownership scheme with over N30 billion worth of properties listed.

Speaking, Chief Executive Officer, Lifecard International Investment, Grace Ofure, while emphasising on the importance of co-investment, in her presentation, pointed out that, with co-investment, there are opportunities to take advantage of affordable investment amounts, higher returns on investment, and management flexibility, among others.

Speaking of choices and opportunities, the Chief Executive Officer, UAC Property Development Company, Odunayo Ojo, noted that new urban communities that were well-planned supported a high quality of life when done properly by experienced hands.
Ojo urged investors to key into a purpose-built new community where all the modern techniques of community building are designed from the scratch.

In the same vein, Managing Director, Orange Island, Yinka Ogunsulire, saw these communities as urban design movements that promote walkable neighborhoods containing a range of housing and job types.