Over the years, the Lifecard Co-invest Platform, a real estate investment vehicle, has been deployed to empower young and aspiring real estate investors by providing them with the right direction, tools, information and, in some cases, the needed funding.
Lifecard Co-invest Platform is a brain-child of Lifecard Investment Company Limited—a relatively young real estate investment and development company that came into the Nigerian real estate market intent on providing investment and development opportunities for the benefit of investors, partners and communities.
As an investment initiative, Co-invest Platform brings relatives, friends and people of like-minds together to pool resources for investment in properties in high-growth locations where, ordinarily on their own, individual investors won’t be able to afford.
According to the promoters, the initiative has been able to bring together over 1,000 young investors who have had cause to smile for taking the decision to be part of the opportunity the platform offers.
At the media launch of the platform in Lagos at the weekend, Grace Ofure Ibhakhomu, Lifecard’s managing director and chief executive officer, explained that the aim of providing the right tools and information to the young investors is to enable them to make right investment decisions and choices.
“For about two decades of my active career in the real estate space, one thing I have come to terms with is the fact that sustainable wealth creation is not a product of wishful thinking, but conscious effort arising from having the right information,” Ibhakhomu noted.
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The Co-invest Platform, she explained, does not only give young investors the right information and materials when it comes to real estate investing, but also serves as a veritable tool for capacity building and financial empowerment.
She said that as a company that thrives on integrity and commitment, they take investors’ preferences into consideration and provide the platform through which they can invest in high growth developments that guarantee good return on investment.
Ibhakhomu recalled how, as a young realtor, she embraced co-investment and was empowered to forge ahead. “Today, I am glad to say it has given me even more than I expected or bargained for,” she said.
“This platform empowers you for the future; it breaks ignorance and broadens the mindset of young ones who don’t have the financial capacity to acquire properties alone. It gives them the right training to enable them to tap the vast opportunities the real estate sector offers,” she assured.
Like any other human initiative, Co-invest Platform has had its drawbacks, especially on issues of mutual trust and investor-confidence. But over time, investors’ concerns have been addressed, According to Udeze Somto Great, internet developer at Lifecard, technology has taken care of the lapses the platform used to have.
He said that the new platform is has not only guaranteed safety of investment, it has also reduced human interface such that investors do not necessarily have to come to them in order to make their contribution.
“The platform is user-friendly and it is open to all potential co-investors who have access to the App,” he assured, urging young investors to tap into the opportunities which the platform has offer many and still counting.
Somto Great said the dream of the platform was to make sure it helps as many people as possible, particularly young person not only in Nigeria and all around the world. “It is our dream also to raise thousands of millionaires through real estate and the best way for us is to start something through the co-investment platform,” he said.
