Terra Developers Launches Carmen’s Creek, Affordable Homes for Young Family
Mary Nnah
Terra Developers Limited, one of the leading developing firms in Lagos and Abuja, has launched a unique product, “ Terra Vantage”, which will encourage young families to acquire homes tailored to suit their immediate housing needs.
This is coming on the heels of the launch of its recent projects which include Carmen’s Creek Phase 1 & 2, Paul’s Creek and Olivia Heights Phase 3, Victoria Garden City (VGC), Lekki, Lagos.
Speaking during the launch of the projects, the Managing Director, Terra Developers Limited, Kola Ashiru-Balogun, said the Carmen’s Creek project, which focuses mainly on young families, has altogether 160 units.
“We are doing two-bed each. It is a unique design in this area. It is more affordable. The houses are in the range of N40 million, which is much more affordable than a lot of homes in this area. The two bedrooms are purposely built for young families and we are also adding BQs. It is fully functional for starters families and is at an affordable price”, he noted.
Speaking on the uniqueness of Terra Developers and the Carmen’s Creek project, which he revealed will cost more than N5 billion to complete, Ashiru-Balogun, said, “We build very solid buildings here and that is one thing that differentiates Terra from a lot of developers out there, especially nowadays that buildings are collapsing. It is very important for people to always remember that quality is more important than anything else.”
He stressed further that what Terra is offering is unparalleled, adding, “A lot of people build terrace houses and bigger houses here but our houses are more functionalised to your wallet. Like, I have two children and I don’t need a four or five-bedroom flat. I can’t even afford a 4-bedroom apartment at this time. So, we felt that instead of selling expensive houses, why don’t we reduce the prices and create functional size houses for people.”
He explained further that with the number of young people around Lagos today, there was an urgent need for developers to build functional two-bedroom homes, otherwise, young families will be deprived of living peaceful and happy lives in their respective homes.
He said the young population are a huge market, revealing however that a lot of them have been pushed out of the market, which is why Terra Developers is focusing on that particular population at the moment.
“We are launching a lot of units in this area because we are very positive about the real estate market; we are launching three products today namely, Carmen’s Creek, Paul’s Creek and Olivia Heights as well as unveiling a new product called, Terra Vantage.”
“Olivia Heights is phase 3 of our project. We have done Olivia Court, it is completed and people are living there. We have had excellent reviews, rentals, returns and investments from our buyers and based on these, we started doing the Olivia Heights and this is now phase 3 of Olivia Heights.”
“Now, the question is how do you buy these properties? And that is where our new product, “ Terra Vantage”, comes in”, he said.
Ashiru-Balogun explained, “Terra Vantage is a unique product whereby we use a combination of different tools to reduce the interest rates on buying a home so that at the end of the day, you are doing about 10 per cent of net payment over 20 years and all you are putting down upfront is about 15 per cent of the purchase price instead of 30.”
“We have also introduced Mortgage products and we combine these mortgage products based on the conventional mortgages, which are already accessible like the institution or federal mortgages e.g NHF and all the likes. We combine all these over some time and if you now have your Retirement Saving Account (RSA) Pension, we can extract some of it – we can take up to 25 per cent of that so that it reduces your cost significantly rather than seeing your money just sit down in your pension, you can use it towards these houses.”
“And we also partner with a few institutions to put the Terra Vantage product together and they are supporting us all the way through and have Imperial Homes Mortgage Bank and a couple of other mortgage banks are also supporting us”
He noted however that solving the housing deficit in Nigeria is going to be a combination of efforts by the government and private developers like Terra Developers, adding, “Government alone cannot solve it nor can the private developers alone solve it. Altogether, Terra is doing about a thousand units between Lagos and Abuja, over the next three to five years. And Lagos state has done maybe like five thousand units over the past four years and yet we haven’t scratched the surface. All we need is more support from the government in terms of policies. timely approvals and all the like, so that we can get approvals done on time and get our projects done.
