Beyond the dearth of cheap housing finance that could enable them buy or build their own homes, many Nigerians are ‘homeless’ because they lack knowledge of innovative ways of owning homes without having to break the banks. Many are also in this class due to lack of patience.
For people in the low income group, the best strategy to owning a home is to start from buying a plot of land. Oftentimes, however, many of these people do not know that their first land may not even be their dream land. The dream land could be in Ikeja, Magodo, Ilupeju, Gbagada or Festac Town in Lagos.
But Pertinence Limited, a relatively young and very dynamic real estate firm, says these places where cost of land is on the high side shouldn’t be the place to buy the first land even though that is where they dream to have their land. “You can start from the remote locations like Ifo, Atom, Mowe, etc”, the company advises.
Nigeria is burdened with over 20 million housing units deficit. An analysis of this deficit shows that over 80 percent of the deficit resides within the low income segment of the country’s housing market where the low and mid-income earners are largely underserved.
“We came into real estate business with a full understanding of the demand-supply gap in the market. We told ourselves that we could be a part of the solution to this problem. This was why we started to look out for the low income class of people”, Sunday Olorunsheyi, Executive Director, Admin/Operations at Pertinence, told journalists at an interactive session in Lagos recently.
The level of poverty in Nigeria is such that some of the low income earners cannot even afford the cost of a plot of land. That reality caused Pertinence to begin to demystify owning a plot of land by helping buyers to see or understand that it is not a bad thing to dream of upscale locations, but they must face the reality of their economic condition by starting from the low level and graduate from there.
“We have designed schemes in low places like Ifo and Aton and made it easy for them to buy. Our prices are not so high and the payment plan is very flexible. We have also helped the buyers to conquer the fear that normally comes with acquiring land which is the issue of ‘Omo-nile’. We made them understand that buying from us means buying peace of mind, flexibility of payment and affordability”, Olorunsheyi said.
Within the last seven years the company has operated in the real estate space, it has been able to provide or catalyse homeownership for well over 10,000 Nigerians who have subscribed to their ABC and VIP Gardens, and other schemes in various parts of Nigeria. In 2018, they moved up the ladder in their product offering and mid-income earners were in focus.
This year, according to Olorunsheyi, they are already positioning themselves for the great exploits they plan to make in the market place. “2018 was like a foundational stage for that level. 2019 is the time we really want to achieve the goal we have set for ourselves as an organization”, he enthused.
Besides real estate business, Pertinence is also into people empowerment and enterprise development which speak to its mission ‘to be a part of the solution to several challenges we have in the world and Nigeria in particular’.
“We came into business with the primary purpose of solving problems. Every businessman wants to make profit. But in our own case, we are here not just to make profit, but also to help people that partner with us in the course of our business to achieve their own dream”, Wisdom Ezekiel, Executive Director Marketing at the company, disclosed.
He said that they were driven by the realization that there are three major things that people want to achieve in life and one of them is financial freedom, explaining that people want to get to a stage in life when they don’t need to work for money, but rather that money would start working for them.
With a platform it calls Enterprise Screening and Resource Acquisition Centre (ESSTRAC), the company has been able to raise over 500 entrepreneurs who have gone ahead to start their own businesses. As a free enterprise system, Pertinence has also empowered over 3,000 people.
But Ezekiel explained that these 3,000 people work with them under a system whereby they make money through doing business with the company even though they are not their employees. “That way, we have been able to tackle the problem of unemployment in Nigeria”, he noted.
“These people don’t earn salary but income from us. What we did was to design a system in which once you come into the system, you invite other people to join you, creating what could be called a network system”, he added.
CHUKA UROKO
