Why Nigeria’s Housing Deficit Is Getting Worse – Developer

A real estate developer, My-Ace China, has stated that the housing deficit in Nigeria is worsening because the population is growing faster than developers can build housing.

China made the declaration in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, at the Business Day South-South/South-East real estate exhibition and investment summit.

He called on the federal government to set up gas-powered industrial parks for indigenous building materials to crash power costs, which will, in turn, reduce the cost of building in the country.

“Indigenous building materials must be produced through what the government can call housing free trade zones with zero tax and free duty, plus low power cost as indigenous building materials parks. As long as the exchange rate is high, anything imported is out of the reach of the common man.

“The second is public-private partnerships (PPP) that are private, not political. Non-political PPPs will help the government bring in private developers and practitioners with a proven record, as River State has done, so the government can now subsidise costs by providing land and title, thereby reducing the headache and cost of titling and land acquisition.

“When land acquisition and titling are taken off the equation, 40% of housing costs have already been removed.

The last, or third, of the solutions the government will need to put in place is, of course, ease of doing business, including financing and access to global funds.

“It includes matchmaking of value versus practitioner, enabling established real estate developers to have an ease of doing business and to encourage more people to want to invest in real estate. When they invest, supply will be high. When supply is high, prices fall,” he said.

China stated that the three things: trade parks for building materials for them to be indigenous, land PPPs and land subsidisation, and general ease of doing business, must be done fast, saying, “Most times the banks don’t lend to real estate, and it makes doing real estate business very difficult.”

“If they do these three things, real estate will be so attractive that everybody will jump into it, supply will surge, and prices will fall.

“It’s a movement that has left the green development and gone to what I call a concrete desert because plants are expensive and Nigerians are usually in a hurry with a high test and high requirement for affordability.

“At the Mayor of Housing, we believe that trees and human beings must coexist because trees breathe out oxygen and take in carbon dioxide, which humans breathe out.

“So we are championing the renaissance and the return to green living and I believe there should even be a legislation for the minimum number of trees that must go with a house so that if you have 1,000 units of houses, if a minimum number of trees is, for instance, five trees per house, you are developing 5,000 houses, you should have 25,000 trees. So, that awareness needs to be created, and I am not just advising the government,” he said.