‘It took diligence and a whole lot of effort to win people’s trust to do business with us’

Chudi Ubosi and Emeka Eleh are business partners and co-founders of Ubosi Eleh & Co, a firm of estate surveyors and valuers. They have, in the last 35 years, run a successful practice that has become a reference point in the estate surveying and valuation profession in Nigeria. In this interview with Chuka Uroko, they reflect on their journey so far, highlighting their highs and lows as a business, and what they have done differently that has kept the business standing strong, 35 years after. Excerpts:

In Nigeria, it is said that companies hardly survive beyond five years, but you are 35 and still counting. Tell us your story

It’s been a long journey. 35 years is not a joke by every stretch, and we are delighted and very grateful to God that we’ve come this far and are still standing. But it didn’t come by accident. We’ve known each other long before we started. We had a shared vision of what to do beyond real estate.

In fact, we actually toyed with a couple of other businesses that didn’t work along the line while we were doing our normal internship. We finished and started working. We shared ideas that always focused on estate surveying and valuation practice. We always had it clear in our mind that even though we tried some other things by the side, we were focused on real estate and that was going to be our core business

Therefore, when we decided to set out, we left our workplaces, including a bank, and joined real estate firms because we needed to be trained in the marketplace to set up a firm. The plan was not to work for too long. That vision helped us to go into practice early enough.

When we felt the time was right in 1991, we set up the business. Our vision was always clear to do it differently from how others were doing it. We are a lot more open. Some firms in those days had a very conservative view of the practice. They used NITEL phones and would lock the phones when going out, which was illogical, because leaving them open would have enabled their staff to reach out to customers.

We set up at 104, Awolowo Road in Ikeja, just two of us and a secretary. After two years, we relocated to No. 27, Awolowo Road, where we have our head office today. After about three years, we opened our Victoria Island office on Adeola Odeku Street. From there, we moved to this place, Adeyemo Alakija Street, also in Victoria Island.

Our firm has expanded with branches in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Awka, Onitsha and Enugu, and in terms of staff numbers, it is quite huge. We were doing a poll of people who will receive awards at our forthcoming anniversary, and realised that well over 45 people have been in this office for more than 10 years.

Our secretary, for instance, has been with us since inception. So, she is as old as the practice. This is because we care not just for ourselves, but for all those around us.

When you started, you had your vision of where you were headed. What exactly is that vision that has been driving your operation and the success story you are telling today?

Our vision has always been to start a firm that can drive our understanding of the practice that we are into; that can survive the test of time. Our model can be likened to Akintola Williams, who was the doyen of the accounting profession. He set up Akintola Williams and Co, and if they tell you the category of those who pass through him, you’ll be amazed.

Our vision is also to create a practice that can outlive both of us and actually leave it behind for others to follow. To achieve that, it requires focus, commitment, and diligence.

Not only have we been nice to our staff, we’ve also delivered quality service to our customers. We’ve always said that everybody who walks into our office should leave happy, whether or not we satisfy his needs, or whether or not we did business with him. We are committed to customer service, training, and an enduring relationship.

We tell our people that that is the way to run a business because we’re also concerned about what we expect them to do to keep this business going. We are well over 60 years now. We don’t know how much longer we will be here, but the truth is that our focus is to drive the vision of the company. Our motto for this year is ‘Built to Last.’ We are concerned about what we are leaving behind.

Our core strength remains our people who we try to train in a way that they can understand the vision and run with it.

What has been the major source of your strength and growth as a business. Who or what would you attribute your success to?

God has been gracious; we can’t thank Him enough. We can’t thank our customers enough. Many of them have kept faith with us in the past 35 years because we insist on giving quality advice. Our office is open to give good advice. Our primary goal is to give good advice, and that is what we do across all our offices.

We take the issue of customer service seriously, ensuring that our transactions are efficiently done for the benefit of those we work for. We take those services as corporate principles that we have built in our profession. We have done fairly well, and we thank God for it. God has really been very good to us. His grace has been visible in our practice, and we thank Him immensely; we thank our customers and everyone too.

Looking back 35 years, how would you describe the beginning, maybe funny in some cases and sobering in others; how would you capture those moments when it seemed things were not adding up?

We started small and did things differently, just two of us and one secretary who joined us two days after. We worked hard and God has played a very strong role in our lives, in our business, in our families. We worked hard, and we had vision and focus. We had a long-term plan. We would leave the office every morning with 30 to 40 complimentary cards, and we would go marketing and wouldn’t come back to that office until all those cards were exhausted. We focused on the banks, many of which are no longer in business.

I remember days when we would leave the office, and I would stay in the Marina car park after walking the length and breadth of the street. I would wait for the owners of the cars parked there.

When I saw a man with a nice suit, I would greet and give him my card.

We also did a lot of advertising in the then Guardian Property. At the time, Guardian Property pullout had over 60 pages on a Monday. Today, we are transiting from a period when property sales were a secret business. Today, someone can tell you, ‘it’s my property, I can sell it if I want to.

Phones were not available then unlike what we have today. When the phone lines with 090 came, we bought one because we understood the importance of communication and played on it. We also understood the importance of networking and relationships.

What challenges did you face while coming up? What are the issues that you are still having, especially in the over-crowded property market?

Well, as a business, there are core issues we have had to face. Speaking globally, there are some aspects of the work we do that are rather unregulated. When we came in, we realised that valuation was about the only area that is professionally known; it is the only aspect others can’t encroach into, as it were. So, only a few surveyors and valuers could do valuations apart from those who forged reports, which is an entirely different issue.

So we paid greater attention to those areas because it was exclusively a surveyors’ and valuers’ turf, and therefore we paid attention to ensure that we had a good hold on it. For some time, 75 percent to 80 percent of our income is from valuation. People don’t know that much of the work we do is valuation. For a long while, the valuation staff in our office are 60 percent to 70 percent of the entire staff.

The other areas of our practice have challenges because of the lack of regulation. In this country, anybody can do estate agency, including leasing and sales, because it is not regulated, and that is not what it is supposed to be. That practice should be properly regulated, so that only those who are properly registered and trained should do it.

One other challenge we had in those earlier days was breaking into the market, which was difficult. It was difficult for us as a new firm with only two young men walking the streets of Lagos to build trust. It took diligence and a whole lot of effort to win the trust of people to do business with us. It was tough, but with commitment and perseverance, we kept at it.

We came out at a time when the big names like Knight Frank was a behemoth. You also had Dosumu and Co, Jide Taiwo, Diya Fatimilehin, among others. It was difficult to break into the market dominated by these giants, but with God’s grace, we were able to sail through.

If you check how GTBank started, it was a revolution. You learn a few things from how others run their business. When GTBank came out as a new generation bank, it turned things around in the banking system. We learnt a few things from their revolutionary approach to banking, and that helped us to do things differently.

By and large, there were very big challenges, like the issues of regulation I mentioned earlier, quackery, which is prevalent, and getting skilled staff. We are not banks that will hire and send them to a training school for six months. Smaller firms like us can’t afford that, and so we have to train them on the job.

Approvals and land titling are major challenges in the real estate sector today. As an expert in this sector, what would you suggest as solutions to these problems?

The government needs to give people title to the property they own. You know, every land in this country is owned by somebody. The only way you will know is when you enter the land and start doing something. We’ve always advocated that to grow the economy, to fight poverty and to put money in the hands of people, the government needs to give title to land.

One way or another, everybody has access to property. If you don’t have it in Lagos, you have it in your village, and every property has value. If you give me the title to what I have in my village, maybe the property can give me N1 million or N2 billion, which is a lot of money to start a small-scale business. If it’s in Lagos, it may be worth billions of naira, but the truth is that it is difficult for you to raise money from what you own without a title.

If you see a man who owns 50 hectares of land, because he has no paper, there’s no way he can convert that asset to raise money for his business. Such a man may indeed be lacking N100,000, but he can’t get it because the asset he has is not convertible, and no way he can convert it to capital.

You may have heard about dead capital. Land is there, but because there’s no title or documentation, it’s difficult to convert it. So we advise the government that, look, it’s actually better to begin a land reform process that will give everybody title to his land. When that is done, the government is able to generate more income through property taxes.