By Dapo Akinrefon

FOLLOWING incidents of building collapse in Lagos State, the Chief Executive Officer of Darryl Homes Nigeria Limited, Mr. Yusuf Odumade, has urged the state government to enforce policies to check the shoddy works of developers in the state, saying such move will reduce the incessant collapse of buildings in the state.

In a statement, Odumade said the incessant collapse of buildings in Lagos, in recent times, will become a thing of the past if the regulatory bodies can do their jobs, in line with the real estate policies of the state.

He noted that the real estate industry is huge and offers opportunities for participants in the sector to generate revenue.

He said: “The government has turned the real estate industry into revenue generating sector. The government has made sweet policies and set up regulatory bodies to put developers in check, but in the long run, they serve as revenue-generating means for themselves.

“Cutting corners is an old-fashioned tactic in real estate. From experience, most of the corner cutters have blamed themselves in the long run. Let me give you a practical example. We have properties that stay a year or more in the market before they are sold. For a developer that has cut corners in painting for example, he will have to repaint and repaint before he gets his property sold out, which means he must have spent times three of the initial painting cost as a result of the delay in selling off his property. 

“Another example is houses that have cracks, the Lekki-Ajah axis for example, it’s a water-filled land that mostly requires pile foundations, and some developers cut corners and will do just raft foundations and neglect the piling just because they want to be cost-effective.

“In the long run, their houses crack and they have to sometimes demolish or spend extra cost to repair what should have been done properly. So, corner cutting most times is also a disadvantage to developers that do such.”