‘Why Kwankwasiya isn’t for low income earners’

How has it been since you entered the property market?We entered the property market two years ago. We’ve made some strong impacts relative to the demands. We realize that there is a huge demand for medium priced and low priced houses. Many of the houses in the market today are beyond the reach of the […]

How has it been since you entered the property market?
We entered the property market two years ago. We’ve made some strong impacts relative to the demands. We realize that there is a huge demand for medium priced and low priced houses. Many of the houses in the market today are beyond the reach of the average Nigerian so we’ve devised a concept where we construct houses that are affordable and are accessible – not in high profile zones. By doing this, we’re able to meet the desires of the medium income public.
Number two, we’ve realized that the general pattern in town is for property developers to simply acquire pieces of land, demarcate them and sell to the plots to individuals to build on their own. While this has its advantage relative to affordability in terms of initial take off, you find that many of such estates are abandoned because even the so-called medium income earners are left on their own without guidance.
In our own case, we partner with mortgage finance organizations. In that way, we’re not only making them affordable, we’re building and being supported by finance houses that give us support in funding. Our approach is different from most of the developers’ because we’re actually building houses.  

What’re your feelings regarding the launch of the mortgage refinance fund this year?
We’re grateful with the launch of the mortgage refinance fund. That will hugely support the low income/medium income earners because the loan is in the range of 30 percent from commercial banks. The mortgage banks give you loans with interest of probably 20 percent. The Federal Mortgage Bank has a single-digit interest rate but accessing loans through the Federal Mortgage Bank has been difficult because funding has been a big issue.
But the mortgage refinance fund as approved by government – I’m told is to be managed by the CBN, is a good starting point. I see it as an honest, genuine move to reduce the burden on the public relative to mortgage financing they might have taken from commercial banks.

What kind of houses do you think suit the medium income earners?
If you go outside Abuja – Kaduna, Lokoja, Ilorin, Ibadan, Calabar, Enugu, you see that a medium income house shouldn’t be more than N5 million. Abuja unfortunately, has inherent high cost of everything – accessing the land is expensive, labour is expensive. So today in Abuja, what you might call a medium income house is in the region of N20 million to N30million. High income houses are N100 million and above. Nobody would want to believe that they can easily get a house in Abuja and call it a medium income for less than N20 million, unfortunately!
How I wish it was possible. Yes, some companies have come up with houses of N7 million, N10 million. It’s acceptable, it’s good! Hexalix is trying to venture into that. If you look at the houses we build in the region of N15 million, N20 million for a bungalow of three bedrooms with en suite toilet, PoP, the kind of quality we put in place, I think there’s value for money.

Kano people express concern that Kwankwasiya housing scheme is rather elitist.
Rabiu Kwankwaso is innovative, visionary, result-orientated, people-oriented governor. These are obvious facts. Kwankwasiya is just one of the three. Kwankwasiya is elitist. It’s like the new GRA of Kano. They’re going to have a new Government House, a five-star hotel – he’s trying to create a new city that will be a high prime value.
But he’s having two others that are for medium and even low-income [earners]. Yes people can say Kwankwasiya is elitist but he’s for the masses for sure. He has not abandoned the masses. He’s got Amana. There’re also two other cities for the masses. Their values are far less than Kwankwasiya in terms of land and anticipated development there. They’re high density lands.
We have eight houses there. We purchased Eight Plus and we’ve started to build duplexes with boys’ quarters. Each one is valued at N35 million.

When will Kwankwasiya houses be completed?
We should be through by the end of the year. In the next six months we’re done because the city is already up. By December, we should be rolling out Kwankwasiya. We’re gonna change the landmark because with the designs we’re developing, we’re surely going to be one of the best.
Our plans have been approved by government. We’ve got the seal of the statutory bodies of Kano State. We’re putting up eight houses in prominent locations and I think they’ll be the talk of town. We’re coming out with a really modern design. And the prices are fair for a place like Kano. We’ve got their best architects to come up with these concepts. If we do the development in line with the designs we’re confident we’ll have…

How is the agreement?
We got the land allocations directly from government so it’s our own land. The property title is in our name. We’re going to build 100 percent ourselves but then we’re advertising for people to buy. We’re confident that selling them will be easy because people have seen the designs, they like them. We’re engineers by training and we’re a serious construction company. We deliver what we plan to deliver.

What specifically are you doing to help low income earners in all you do as a developer?
Low income earners can own houses only if land becomes fairly cheap. If we can access land without huge compensation costs, that will directly impact on the product we develop. Currently, we’re looking at all design concepts that can give you a house at a low price. There’re certain fixed factors you can’t change – cost of building materials. Cement for example is going up. Prices of a number of items in the market have gone up in the last three months unfortunately. And there will be more price increases in the coming months – we suspect.
So we have two opposing forces. While we’re struggling to keep the price of houses low, the prices of contents of these houses are going up. The real objective is to come with a simple design – design that will be beautiful…then see whether more of the components will be fabricated by us directly. That way, we’ll keep the cost of third parties out. We should bring timber directly from the forest.