Expert Advocates Low Profile in Housing
Housing
By Dan Ede
"Our taste here is too large, too greedy. The average Nigerian wants to live in a very big house. We need to learn to live in a moderate home; we don't need all those big houses".
With the above statements, Mr. Modebe Osuji, a real estate broker and Chief Executive Officer of Century 21 Real Estate Corporation, criticized Nigerians' housing taste.
Speaking to THISDAY recently, he said the quest for a very large house by a small family is not only uncalled for, but also amounts to a deprivation of economic fund.
He further noted that in most cases such people find it difficult to maintain such houses, or to even beautify the surroundings. "Here, you can get a family of six people; that is, husband, wife and children; and they are living in a big house. They are supposed to live in a two-bedroom bungalow -husband and wife in one room, the children in the other; and then the sitting room and the kitchen. That is all.
"In the United States, they build small houses; and they make these houses very beautiful. But here, so many people build big houses. May be in the next 10 years, they will not renovate the houses. They may not even have the money to plant flowers in the premises. If you are passing there, it will look like a grave yard", he observed.
He therefore asked: "So, won't it be better if they build a small house, plant beautiful flowers and maintain the house; make it look beautiful everywhere?".
Osuji remarked that housing is a necessity not a luxury, observing that some people use hundreds of thousands of naira to build residential houses in Nigeria. "That is deprivation of economic fund; and that is stupid because that your residential house cannot yield any income for you since it is not for commercial purpose", he quipped.
The registered appraisor (surveyor) in the State of Michigan, United States, also frowned at the wealth distribution system in Nigeria. "The truth is this: the distribution of wealth in this country is too bad. They are doing monetization now; how many Nigerians can afford to buy their own homes, even if it costs N5 million? A director- general who in not corrupt cannot buy a house for N10 million; check his salary.
"Besides, the naira is in bad shape; the people are poorly paid; the economy is bad. So, housing is the third in the level of human necessity, but people are still battling with feeding, vigorously. But they are working for government, from 8 am to 8 PM. When their children start secondary school, they will have heart attack and die. And you are talking about housing. To them, you are beating about the bush. They are praying for time to come for retirement so that they will go to the village and die. Life means nothing to them; and government is not listening", he elaborated.
He observed that 80 per cent of the houses in Abuja belong to only 1 per cent of Nigerians, whereas in the United States, 90 per cent of the houses in any city belong to about 75 per cent of the people because everybody has his own house.
He also argued that the mortgage system has not taken shape in Nigeria because the Primary Mortgage Institutions (PMIs) do not have feeder institutions. "The Central Bank of Nigeria cannot give them money, the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) cannot give them money. It has to be their money. But who will bring in his money to say that at the end of the year the interest rate will be 12 per cent; when, if he invests it in the Shell Project, every month he makes 10 per cent?", he asked.
He continued: "But in America, immediately you start work, you get a loan to buy your own house and you will be paying back the loan gradually".
Mr. Modebe Osuji operates a real estate brokerage firm, which functions as a subsidiary of the American-based Century 21 Corporation.
Explaining his firm's services, Osuji said: "We are involved basically in exclusive buyer representation. In the Nigerian real estate market, you see people who buy property today; tomorrow, it goes under the demolition bulldozer of Mallam Nasir el-Rufai. You get properties that their documents are either not complete or not correct; the average buyer is ignorant.
"So, what we do here is to represent buyers and we have in our team surveyors, marketers, etc. We guarantee buyers that any property we buy for them, they will make a saving of at least N10 million. At the end of the transaction, we get our commission from the seller, not even from the buyer whom we represented".
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