Developers should embrace backward integration – REDAN

Tell us the challenges you are facing as developers in making housing available and affordable to the people.The challenges have to do with the whole process of acquisition of land, capital and basic raw materials in building construction. How can we tackle these challenges?The government is trying the little best it can do but from […]

Tell us the challenges you are facing as developers in making housing available and affordable to the people.
The challenges have to do with the whole process of acquisition of land, capital and basic raw materials in building construction.

How can we tackle these challenges?
The government is trying the little best it can do but from what you can see here today aside from the secondary infrastructure everything that is being done is provided by the developer. If we continue this way we might not be able to crash down the price of houses. Except developers look inward instead of looking for  the support of government alone, things will remain the same.  What we are saying is that developers should possibly look at alternative building materials and embrace what we called backward integration without compromising standard and quality in construction.

The Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Mrs. Akon Eyakenyi recently said that the federal government is going to put a bench mark to the prices  of houses  to reduce cost , as a developer do you think this is realistic?
It is very feasible, with the mass housing scheme, the government is coming with a lot of support.  So if the cost of marketing is removed from the entire activities, it counts a lot. And they are also coming with allocation of lands in strategic location without charging much. It will definitely help us to reduce cost.

Won’t this affect the demand and supply chain?
It won’t, it will help us to save cost.

The federal government recently set up 3 committees to look at various housing issues, what is your take on this?
They are working and we are working together with them and at the end of the day, coming from the angle of   somebody on the ground who is relating with the policy makers, we will come up with something that will be much more helpful in addressing the challenges in the sector.

The issue of houses being bought over by those in the upper class at the detriment of the low income earners has been in the front burner for now, what is your view on this?
From what you can see here today, it is a combination of houses for all strata of the economy because approval will not come for middle income, high income, it comes for accommodation for every strata of the economy. What the development control will approve is definitely provision for affordable social housing. A percentage of the land allocation must go for the   development of houses for particular strata of the economy. That is low income.

25 million naira is the cheapest house being sold here, are you saying that such houses can be afforded by the low income?
I want us to appreciate one fact, each time we talk about cost of building; you have to be very conscious of the location. This is a strategic location.  If you want to talk about houses that are going to be affordable to the low income, even in Britain one bedroom apartment in a prime area will not go for what you are expecting. That is why a lot of people live outside the city there.  In satellite towns of course you don’t expect houses to be high there if you do that, that means you are under utilising the value of the land.
Bungalows are common here instead of high rise buildings as we have it in the Europe, is this one of the strategies of saving lands and reducing the cost of houses?
Generally, anywhere in the world  housing development comes with the development of the country. As we stand today, you know the infrastructures are not there, how do you make provision for 15-16 high rise buildings when they are not going to have electricity? But as time goes on we will change even if you go to Europe these days the government, the council are changing the kind of houses that were built 50 years ago. They crushed down duplexes and you have several plots of lands to accommodate more houses.  In another 30-40 years, some of these houses will give way to what is applicable then.

There is allegation that some of your members are using substandard building materials to reduce cost, what is your take on this?
We have a technical committee of the association; we are ensuring from time to time that people comply with the National Building Code. The World Bank is working with us to ensure that we begin to train artisans and we will ensure that every developer and people that work on sites must have the certification of this training institute.