A real estate summit has ended in Port Harcourt, Rivers State with stakeholders urging government at all tiers to adopt recommended steps at crashing the rising cost of building materials in Nigeria.

The summit which also featured exhibition on new housing models and investment tools gathered top real estate players across South South and South East of the nation.

Among the key participants were My-ACE China of the Mayor of Housing Group, Mustapha Njie of TAF Africa Global, Bolaji Oshobukola of Odibola Properties Ltd, and Onyekachi Nzekwesi of Pineleaf Estate and Property Company.

They all appealed to Ahmed Musa Dangiwa, Minister of Housing and Urban Development to lead federal government on urgent execution of the suggestions and recommendations from the summit.

Outlining the outcome of the summit, China, also known as Mayor of Housing lamented that housing deficit in Nigeria, now at 22 million, is getting worse because the population is growing faster than developers can provide housing.

To reverse this deficit narrative, China said: “First, indigenous building materials must be produced through government established housing free trade zones.

“They come with zero tax and free duty plus low power cost as indigenous building materials parks. As long as exchange rate is high, anything imported is out of the reach of the common man.

“The second step is public private partnerships (PPP) that are not political. PPPs will help government encourage private developers and practitioners with proven record, just as River State has done.

“So government can now subsidize cost by providing land and titles, easing the stress and cost of land acquisition lower. When land acquisition and titling is taken off the equation, 40% of housing costs have already been removed.

“A third solutions government needs to put in place is to ease access to financing. Most times the banks don’t lend to real estate and it makes doing real estate business very difficult.

“By engaging matchmaking of value versus practitioner, you enable established real estate developers to enjoy ease of doing business, encouraging more people to want to invest in real estate. When they invest, supply will be high. When supply is high, prices fall.”

Sharing personal experiences on improving sustainable housing for maximum customer value, he noted that, “At the Mayor of Housing, we believe trees and human beings must coexist because trees breathe out oxygen and take in carbon dioxide which humans breathe out.

“So we are championing a renaissance for return to green living, with need for legislation for minimum number of trees that must go with a house. So if you have 1000 units of houses with minimum five trees per house, you are developing 5,000 houses for 25,000 trees.”

“That’s why on our flagship project, Alesa Highlands Green Sustainable Green Smart City, we are building the lowest density green versus living area. That means the green area will be higher than the living area and we must have a policy that encourages integrated horticulture.

Highlighting how appalling that Africa is the hottest, brightest continent in the world, yet not leading in the solar surge, China noted, “When God blessed the world to turn the heat and brightness of sun to energy, Nigeria and Africa should have been leading the green revolution for solar energy because we have more sunlight than we need.

“We have more heat than we need. Converting this to energy is part of sustainability and that’s part of what we are putting in our project that is going to be the first, zero emissions project.

“Our advocacy is that technology must play its role, but technology must be our servant and not our master because technology is an excellent servant for a terrible master.

“We must not copy and paste blindly what works in other climes without indigenizing it into our culture, into our environment and into our health requirement.”