Gran Imperio in bullish essential-homes delivery, targets 1,000 units in 2015

In a manner consistent with its mission to deliver substantial value to its institutional, corporate and private clients, Gran Imperio Group is in bullish outing with a range of its essential homes brand aimed to  address the housing needs of different income groups in society.

Relatively young but very dynamic, Gran Imperio is  the holding company of a number of active companies in the real estate industry including the Metropole Interproject Limited, Howard Roark Limited and Gran Imperio Resorts—the developers of Inagbe Grand Resorts and Leisure.

With seven wholly owned housing projects that have capacity to deliver over 400 housing units besides  30,000 square metres and 194 square metres of residential and commercial plots respectively of site and service schemes, Gran Imperio is also involved in partnership initiatives that hold promise for a little over 1,000 housing units that will, on completion, provide homes for over 2,000 families.

“We are involved in several developments and will continue to be involved as a corporate body”, Adeyeye Ogunwusi, the Gran Imperio MD/CEO, told newsmen during a tour of these facilities, adding that their success story hinged on their ability to achieve a rapid occupancy of their estates.

Apart from Jacob Mews, a 123-unit development comprising three-bedroom apartments with boy’s quarter, three-bedroom maisonettes with boy’s quarter and four-bedroom terrace houses with boy’s quarter,  which has been completed with over 85 percent occupancy rate, and NorthPointe Phases I, II III and SouthPointe Phase I, the company’s eight other projects are at various stages of construction.

Those at different construction stages are Lakeview Park 1, II; Mid-land Court, SouthPointe II, Golden Leaf Estate, Y’hello Estate, all promoted under EssentialHomes brand. Infrastructure development has been completed at Lake View Park 1, a site and service scheme, strategically located along Lekki-Epe Expressway adjacent to Victoria Garden City (VGC) with 194 square metres of residential plots and over 30,000 square metres of commercial plots.

Lakeview Park 11, a gated residential community along Lafiaji Road, Lekki designed with a natural lake, has 160 residential plots of different sizes and an area earmarked for commercial activities.  At the moment, 20 buildings are being constructed in this phase.

Also under construction are 24 units of terrace town houses in Midland Court, located on Northern Foreshore road, off Chevron Drive, Lekki, Lagos. It is a premium gated residential community offering spectacular ambience, detailed finishing, security and recreational facilities in a good environment.

This will  be delivered in April this year  along with SouthPointe II and Lakeview Park II which comprises 79 units including 32, 30 and 17 units of three and four-bedrooms and town houses respectively.

Ogunwusi enthused that apart from top-of-the-range facilities and infrastructure which they provide at the estates including football pitch, swimming pool for children and adults, gym, drainage systems,  paved roads, clean environment, electricity, security etc, another selling point for the estates is rapid value appreciation.

Isaac Etim, the company’s Marketing Manager, explained that in just 12 months, their 0ne-bedroom bungalow that was sold at Southpointe for N7.950 million  was now selling for almost N14 million while those that went for N14 million are now sold for N18-19 million.

Ogunwusi disclosed that in the next 12 months, the company would be delivering 1,000 affordable housing units. “Our strategy for this year is to deliver 1,000 homes that people can easily move into. We have built capacity towards achieving this in the past 12 months and by virtue of that capacity, we hope to achieve this easily”, he assured.

In spite of their success stories, Gran Imperio also has its challenges which the managing director listed as land ownership, customer satisfaction, funding, and the environment which is not enabling. “We are not government yet we are providing infrastructure. We had to build a 6.5-kilometre road to our estates and provided electricity both of which are now serving the adjoining community”, he said.

CHUKA UROKO