Professionalism: Knight Frank plans real estate academy for young graduates

Knight Frank, a leading independent real estate consultancy in Nigeria, says it is perfecting plans to set up a real estate academy where young graduates, after their national youth service (NYSC), would be trained for professionalism in estate surveying and valuation.

Authorities of the company, who disclosed to this reporter in an interview, said resource persons from all sectors that have to do with the real estate sector as well as the legal profession and some parts of the construction industry would be engaged to train the young surveyors to become professionals.

“The Knight Frank Academy was my baby when I took over as CEO of this company. I said we were going to have an academy. Right now, on the 8-floor of this building, we are already setting up what is going to be a learning hub,” Frank Okosun, the company’s CEO, confirmed.

Okosun explained that the academy became necessary because experience has shown them that these young graduates don’t have all it takes to work as surveyors and valuers, noting that some of them who worked in small firms were not fully exposed.

“We want to replicate what happens in banking and law professions where young graduates are given professional training to make them fit-for-purpose. We want to bake these young men and women and make them industry-ready; we are not preparing them for just Knight Frank, but also for government and the private sector,” the CEO explained further.

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For a start, he said, they would be taking about 50 graduates, adding that the programme would take off before the end of this year. He disclosed that the learning hub would be ready by the first quarter of this year after which they would put up advert for the young graduates to come.

“We will be looking for the best—those with first-class or second class upper from universities and polytechnics,” he said, pointing out that after 9-10 months training, the trainees would be sent out on industrial training where they would be attached to firms.

“Knight Frank will pay for these expenses. We see this as part of our corporate social responsibility (CSR) and we hope that other firms will join us so we do it together for the sake of our industry,” he said.

Okosun disclosed that his company does not get any subvention from anywhere for its operations or to fund CSR of this nature. Instead, their revenue comes from their areas of core competences including valuation, property management, facilities management, consultancy and estate agency practice.

“For this year, I have budget of over N1 billion for all my service operations. Among others, we expect N500-600 million revenue from valuation which is our cash-cow. From property and facility management, we expect about N300 million and then, others,” he said.

Continuing, he said, “we don’t have subvention; it is our professional skill that gives us all that we need. The transaction we have just closed with one firm which is quite substantial, is coming from estate agency alone.”

He disclosed further that this year, they had done a lot of valuations for some companies including Notore Fertilizer plant and other big companies which are mostly manufacturing companies. “We did the valuation of the Port Harcourt Electricity where we valued all their assets. We do jobs for most of the states of the South-South and these are big-ticket valuation jobs,” he said.