In a near-zero mortgage environment like Nigeria, finance constitutes a major barrier to owning a home. Another major barrier is land which is made worse by tenure system and ownership which are not only primitive, but also rigid.
Worried about this situation which is dire, especially in urban centres, some estate developers have come up with innovative and creative ways of easing these barriers for low income earners who also need home they can call their own.
One of such developers is Gestpoint Nigeria Limited whose mission in the real estate market is to sell affordable products, targeting Nigerians in low-income group.
“Our real target is the low-income group. So, our products are affordable. We also give them opportunity to choose between two and three years to pay so that they can afford what we are selling,” Ebenezer Akinrinade, Gestpoint’s managing director/chief executive officer, explained in an interview at the weekend.
As the first step on the property ladder, Gestpoint is not building houses, but selling land, which it believes, is affordable in the sense that at its Emerald Estate in Ibadan, for instance, it is selling one plot of land for N1.2 million. The buyer is given opportunity to spread the payment over 12 months, that is, N100,000 monthly.
“It is our hope that, with this, corps members, graduates, artisans, and civil servants have an opportunity to spread the payment to own, at least, one plot of land in Nigeria,” Akinrinade said.
As Nigerian economy continues to underperform with inflation and other macro-economic factors rubbishing the value of the little citizens have in their pockets, Akinrinade advised that people should invest in real estate.
“The best thing to do now is to save through investment. The only investment that can help people to challenge this economic meltdown or inflation is to invest in land/ property because if every other thing fails, real estate will never fail.
This is true because, on daily basis, real estate appreciates. You cannot put N100 million in the bank and in three months you expect to meet that 100million intact because inflation must have eroded it. But, in real estate, if you invest that N100 million, I can assure you that in the next three months, that N100million can be N120million or N130million because it will appreciate,” he posited.
Though a relatively young company, Gestpoint has made some mark in the real estate market. Currently, it has six estates in its portfolio. These include, Champions Court located at Igbodu, Epe; Gold City Estate at Ketu Epe; Emerald Estate Phase1 at Ketu, Epe, and Emerald Estate Phase 2 in Ketu, Epe, all in Lagos. The company also has an estate in Ogun State, and another named Emerald Estate, in Ibadan.
The developer assures buyers of security of their investment, explaining that “when you are buying land from a real estate company, the firm shoulders all the burden on perfecting the title documentations,” adding that the firm talks to the government on behalf of the buyer.
“Buying land from ‘omoonile’ is quite different from buying from a real estate company. The first thing any real estate company will do before starting to sell any property is to ensure it’s registered. The next thing is to apply for the survey, and once all these things, especially registered survey, is done on the land, it will be easy for any subscriber to get his or her individual registered survey through the company he or she bought the land from,” he said.
Gestpoint is also upbeat with Diaspora marketing and, according to the CEO, the company has more Diaspora clients than Nigerian clients, “Their response has been positive and many of them do send their family members to come and check. We do virtual inspection with them, we do virtual documentations and after they have completed their payment, we do allocation with corner piece and send their documents to them,” he assured.
