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•Says plans are on to build for middle-income class

By Kingsley Adegboye

The Chairman of The Address Homes, a renowned Lagos-based real estate development company noted for the construction of luxury homes, Mr Bisi Onasanya, has noted that the firm was not set up primarily to make money even though every business will eventually make money.

Onasanya added that rather, the real estate company which was established 16 years ago, came into the business to do things differently from other property developers.

The Address Homes boss who disclosed this at the weekend during an interactive session with property writers, equally disclosed that plans are on to construct flats and terrace houses for the middle-income class as his company have been accused of building for only the very rich and affluent.

According to him: “The real intention of setting up the brand and going into the business is to do things differently from the way others in the same business are doing it. We believe there is a need to bring some integrity into the real estate sector of the nation’s economy. We also believe at the time that quality was a bit deficient, and there was a need to do things that will speak to some level of international standard irrespective of where you are.

“So, we wanted to come into the industry and put up structures called homes and not houses, structures and homes that will compete with the best that people can see outside the country without causing people to break the bank, maybe because they are not able to meet up with payment terms.

“We see people trying to relocate from Canada, America, UK and Europe, and there is a minimum standard of living they are used to. They like to enter a home, and there are basic things they like to see and in the environment, there are things they like to see, and we found this missing to some extent.

“We wanted a situation where if you live in The Address Homes, you will be proud to be living there because of the things we offer and that is what we have been able to do. So far, we have done our best but we still believe we will keep going on. I will share the story of a particular client of The Address Homes whose name I will not mention. He relocated from abroad with his family.

“He bought a plot of land in Banana Island where he would eventually live. But while that was being processed, he visited one of our estates under construction. He liked what he saw, and decided to buy one apartment with the intention to stay there while building his personal house at Banana Island.

“He moved his family into the estate which is our flagship project around Femi Okunnu Estate, Lekki, with a swimming pool, gym, recreation area with basketball court and other state-of-the-art amenities. His children fell in love with the place, and all attempts to relocate his family to Banana Island have failed because his children said they liked the place, and that is where they live to date. “When I hear stories like that, it gives me motivation and it means that we are doing something right. And despite our high taste, we still make our prices affordable, and we are very competitive in terms of prices. But more importantly, we are very resolute about our projects. We allow people to dictate to us within a particular time frame how they want to structure their payments during the construction period.

“Oftentimes, people ask us when we are discussing, the payment plan, and I will say what is important is to spread the payment through the construction process. We tell them to let us know what is convenient for them and we tailor it towards that because your cash flow is different from my cash flow.

“And even at that, we had instances where we had completed a project, people had difficulties making up the final payment. They made a special request to us to allow them to move into the property without completing payment and we obliged them. How do we get our risk? We do, but we make sure we don’t hand over the title document to them until they complete payment.

All these have endeared us to the few people who have had the opportunity to interact with us and they enjoy the services that we offer. So, when I see those things, I feel happy and proud that what I have set out to achieve, has become a reality. In view of this, having succeeded in contributing to the nation’s housing deficit, right now, we operate in the middle market segment essentially.

“And today, we have delivered over 260 housing units comprising completed and ongoing projects.

I mentioned why we are different. We don’t make noise, we don’t tell you you must break the bank to afford our services. In every single estate that we have built, we don’t just hand over keys to subscribers, we make sure we provide facilities management in the estate.

“Living in our estates is very convenient and comfortable for you. We also provide some warranty of a minimum of five to ten years on the structure so that if anything happens, we take responsibility without charging you.”

On middle-income class houses, he said: “In terms of strategic direction, we heard comments from people that only very rich and affluent people can afford our homes. We do have plans to move down a little bit to the lower segment of the middle-income class somewhere around Ajah.

“Between the second Toll Gate and Ajah, we have a development plan of 75 hectares of land. We are in the process of getting the design with which we will be able to create a new development where we will have flats and terrace houses with lower prices and those who cannot afford N50 million or N70 million will be able to afford housing units in our Ajah project.”

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