General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) should put infrastructure development and maintenance on the front burner of his administration’s agenda. The call was made by the Managing Director/CEO of Alpha Mead Facilities & Management Services Limited, a.k.a. AMFacilities, Mr Femi Akintunde. Akintunde an engineer, spoke at a press briefing to formally announce the hosting of the 2015 edition of the Nigerian Facilities Management Roundtable.

The Lagos state government has decried the encroachment of its wetlands by residents of the metropolis. The government said such encroachments frustrate its efforts to conserve the green areas. The State Commissioner for Environment, Mr. Tunji Bello who spoke at the 2015 ministerial press briefing to mark the eighth year in office of Governor Babatunde Fashola, said the government is committed to the preservation of its wetlands because they help to prevent flooding.

The Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Akon Eyakenyi, has called on the newly elected executive members of the Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN) to ensure that stakeholders in the sector maintain quality in pursuit of affordable housing for Nigerians. This, the Minister added, would further curtail incidents of collapsed buildings in the nation. She stated this when the Association led by its President, Rev. Ugochukwu Chime, visited her in her office in Abuja at the weekend.

A precast concrete technology described as fast-pace building system has been introduced into Nigeria’s construction industry as an initiative aimed at bridging the ever increasing housing deficit in the country. The automated precast concrete technology which is known globally for speedy housing construction, was presented by CTSR Group, a Nigerian company with franchise from Broad Homes Industrial International Co. Ltd, the promoters of the technology at the just concluded Lagos Architects’ Forum tagged LAGOS 6.0. The group is a subsidiary of Broad Homes Industrial International Co. Ltd.

Messrs UACN Property Development Company, UPDC PLC, last week, added to his rich property portfolio when it flagged off the construction of a N5 billion premium estate described as “a home by the sea” in the highbrow Lekki Peninsula in Lagos. Named James Pinnock Place, after one of the progenitors of UPDC, the estate which would be sited on three hectares of land, is the third phase of Pinnock Beach Estate development. The entire Pinnock Beach Estate scheme occupies 84.11 hectares of land in the Lekki axis.

All over the world, the ability to own a home without financial assistance is beyond the ability of most people. Mortgage schemes have evolved with the purpose of providing financial support to prospective home owners, providing a loan facility to secure a property and pay the outstanding amount (the principal) back over time, typically with interest on the loan.

In line with its mandate of bringing liquidity into the mortgage market, the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) has concluded plans to refinance N10 billion mortgages in the market this month. Prof. Charles Inyangete, CEO, NMRC, disclosed this at a Public Awareness and Capacity Building Workshop organised by the company in Lagos.

The inability of prospective homeowners to readily come up with the required equity contribution on mortgages has been identified as one of the factors slowing down the process of mortgage origination in Nigeria, Financial Vanguard investigation has revealed. It also partly explains the nation’s huge housing deficit of more than 17 million homes.

Real estate stakeholders have advised the President-elect, Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari to get a competent team that will hit the ground running, and as well as channel efforts towards addressing the housing deficit in Nigeria. They noted that by building 500 houses in each of the 36 States, the incoming Buhari administration can create over one million jobs in Nigeria.

An Ikeja High Court presided over by Justice A. Akinkugbe has ordered parties in the ongoing dispute over a property located at Ikeja to maintain peace pending the determination of the suit before the court.