UPDC Launches The Hampshire, Iconic Piece of Real Estate 

Bennett Oghifo

UPDC Plc., a renowned and foremost player in Nigeria’s housing sector, has launched an iconic piece of real estate, known as The Hampshire.

The Hampshire is a 5 hectare Site and Services development, designed as a gated all-inclusive community with infrastructure that will ensure a low carbon footprint, according to the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of UPDC Plc., Odunayo Ojo, during the launch, last week.

The Hampshire is located along Monastery Road, Sangotedo, Lekki, Lagos, about a minute’s drive from the famous Novare Mall, and about 10 minutes’ drive from Lagos Business School and it is close to the proposed 4th Mainland Bridge, along the Lekki-Epe Expressway.

At the launch of The Hampshire, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, UPDC Plc, Odunayo Ojo, stated that The Hampshire is the latest of their projects. “It’s a five hectare project in the area of Lekki, Lagos. The Hampshire comprises a mixed use development that has such plots as residential, so we have low density residential plots, medium density residential plots and high density residential plots. 

“There are sites from 300m² and you can build single family dwelling houses on them for the medium density plots they are sized from 553m², and you can build semi-detached houses on them and for high density plots, there are sites from 900m² and people can build blocks of apartments on them. We also have two commercial plots sized at about 2435 plot square meters, where people can build different complementary commercial uses like schools, like like cafes, like gyms, you know, like lounges and everything that people need in this neighbourhood can be on commercial plots and then we have a 3000 square meter communal green area, which is really going to be the focal point of the development where, you know, children can come and play, people can have their recreation. We are going to have places where you can do the exercise or just go in the evening and read a book, so it’s a very lifestyle led project, and we hope that our customers are going to have a lot of fulfillment, keying into it as either an investment or as a place to live.”

The Hampshire, he said, is a huge project, and that the cost of infrastructure runs into billions of Naira. “As you can imagine, five hectares with several kilometers of roads and with water treatment plants, with sewage treatment plants, with state of the art infrastructure, such as solar powered street lights, energy efficient installations on the ground water systems, overhead water systems, all those things do cost money. What we have done is to ensure that the project is developed in an efficient way, to make sure that our customers can still afford them, and we are giving people value for money. So, affordability is a key issue given the economic challenges we’ve faced. 

“We make sure that our developments are efficient, we’ve looked at our designs to streamline some of the areas of waste, so in the past, people were building very, very large spaces that amount to a higher cost but very little use, so we are making our development more compact by making them more efficient and that also brings down the cost, in addition to that we are making sure that it’s not just the cost of buying the units that we are focused on, given the cost of living in those units. So, for instance, a lot of our systems are solar powered. In the future you won’t have to worry about things like diesel costs and electricity costs. 

The construction of The Hampshire’s infrastructure will actually begin this week, he said, “Mid November is when we are starting, that’s why we’re having the groundbreaking today (last Thursday) and we intend to deliver the total complete project by February of 2025.

Ojo said UPDC will build for subscribers, saying, “We are starting with the first phase, which is called the Hampshire, which is the site and service scheme and we are also doing units within the project, which we call the Hampshire Court. We are doing three bedroom apartments, which are going to be well priced for our customers to be able to not just have access to land, but also have access to buildings.”

On Nigeria’s housing need, he said, “We have a high deficit of housing in Nigeria and UPDC is contributing its own quota, one project at a time and that’s why we are launching a project like The Hampshire today to contribute our own quota to reducing the housing deficit in the country. 

“Within The Hampshire, you are going to have hundreds and hundreds of households owning their homes. We are going to have, not just shelter, we are talking about homes where people can have fulfillment. In addition to that, we are also creating jobs. 

“One of the greatest problems for the housing challenge is that the income level is low. A lot of people do not have enough income to be able to afford homes, so when we create jobs, when we create well-paying jobs on our projects, we increase people’s ability to demand homes and when there is effective demand, the supply will come and that is the way the market works. 

“If you go and build a lot of houses today and there is nobody to buy them, you lose money. So, the creation of jobs is one of our strategies for solving the housing problem.”