By Kingsley Adegboye

The housing sector in Lagos State was boosted last week with the injection of 324 units into the market. This followed the formal commissioning of r for affordable housing as the solution for acute housing shortfall in Lagos may have started yielding positive results with the commissioning of Cooperative Home Ownership Incentive Scheme, CHOIS Garden Estate in Abijo in the Ibeju-Lekki Local Council Development Area, LCDA.

The residential estate sits on 25 hectares of land with 5 hectares already developed in the phases one and two. The estate which is being developed in three phases, will on completion, add 814 housing units into the Lagos property market. The project is being developed ed by First World Communities, a renowned real estate development in collaboration with Lagos State Government.

The 324 housing units comprise two and three-bedroom apartments in clusters, three-bedroom semi-detached bungalows, four-bedroom semi-detached duplexes and three-bedroom private access maisonettes.

The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of First World Communities, Brigadier-General Tunde Reis (retd) said the estate was conceived to make housing delivery systemic rather than the sporadic way we build. Noting that Lagos has approximately five million housing deficit, General Reis said there is need to look for an industralised and systematic way of delivering the houses.

“What we are commissioning today is actually two phases of a three-phased development. We have been able to build so far in phases one and two, 324 housing units with an additional 90 units still under construction. In the third phase, we will be developing 400 housing units,”he said. Explaining the benefits of CHOIS, he said most middle to low income households in Lagos state have found accessing mortgage to buy or build their homes difficult.

He explained that under the scheme, households that are unable to afford mortgages can have access to a home on lease-to-own basis. He noted that this allows subscribers to occupy the property on a lease, with the option to purchase it in small incremental steps as their socio-economic circumstances improve.

Reis who said the previous challenge is the affordability gap, stated that “the difference between the cost of a house and what an intending buyer can afford to pay is what I think the Lagos State government has addressed here by coming up with a lease-to-own scheme. The scheme is the key because rather than pay in full like you do under a traditional mortgage or put down a 30 per cent deposit, you only need a 15 per cent deposit.

“Traditionally, when our people cannot afford a thing, they come together as cooperators; that is what we have here. We have a CHOIS club, people are contributing, we use that money to build houses and take turns to take them. At a point, rather than government funding this project, it will be funding government because it will become self-driven.