Salawudeen: Why’s Mortgage in Nigeria Over 11%, Dubai 2%

Prof Ahmed Olaniyi Salawudeen, a chartered insurance practitioner and property investment advisor. He is the chairman, Signature Group of Companies. Salawudeen, who has been in business for over 40 years with his company headquartered in Dubai wondered why mortgage is so high in Nigeria at over 11% while it is 2% maximum in Dubai. He discusses this and other issues with journalists on the sideline of the launch of their iconic project in Dubai at a special event in Lagos, recently. Bennett Oghifo reports

What’s the bait investors get in Dubai that is missing in Nigeria?

In Nigeria you want to give a mortgage, you are asking for 11%/15%. Why? In Dubai it’s 1.9/2%

Give us a background of your company and projects

We have been successful in our business. Standard Insurance Company Limited (SICL) came into being on May 30, 1980. In Nigeria, we started with Rural and City Link Property Limited in 2005. We are part of the Signature Group of Companies. We try to metaphors into other businesses like real estate business. Insurance business is an intermediary business. Real estate business is also an intermediary business. But the difference is that one is invisible while the other is visible.  Insurance is an invincible business, whereas real estate business is a business you can see. Signature Real Estate is headquartered in Dubai. Many people will ask, “Why Dubai?” From Dubai, we moved to Nigeria. This is our first time coming to Nigeria for a road show. Our country Nigeria is a great country. I love Nigeria and looking at it, apart from the political situation, Nigeria is the best country in the world if we get the right people to manage it. Unfortunately, we are not yet there. But we will be there In sha Allau. At the moment our office is at 904 Oxford Tower, Business Bay Dubai. And by God’s grace, by October 1, 2022, Signature Global will be moving to one of the iconic win Tower in Dubai Business Financial District.We welcome you to come to this place.

What are your ties in the UAE?

We have partnership with financially secure developers such as Sobha. They are one of the iconic developers, as of today, in the United Arab Emirate (UAE). Therefore our partnership with them has been very remarkable. For Signature, we have made a number of sales in 2021. We have managed many units of property for both local and international places. And we want to make sure that we add Nigeria to the schedule.

Explain what the mortgage situation is like in the UAE

What is happening is this, if you live in UAE, particularly Dubai, the regulation is very simple. It provides security for the buyer and the seller. It is a win-win situation. There are a lot of advantages. As an international buyer, they have a project. It is not like in Nigeria when you want to buy a property, you make one lump payment. They have mortgage banks. You can have many parts of payments. This is very key. In Dubai, mortgage is available to each and everybody. For those who are indigenes – locals. The government has to look after them. That is how it should be. Many years ago in Nigeria there was a popular jargon which reads: ‘There will be housing for everyone in the year 2000’.  Where are the houses today? Our forefathers had a very good bank. They had a bank like NIDB. But the question is, we ask ourselves: ‘how did we find ourselves this way?’ You want to give a mortgage, you are asking for 11%, you are asking for 15%! How do you manage it? It is not possible. In Dubai for instance, if you want to give a mortgage, I believe the highest is about maximum 2%. 1.9 or 2%. Everything is flexible. The idea is to make the middle class enjoy. In Nigeria, do we enjoy anything? I don’t know whether you are enjoying anything, as for me I am not enjoying. But I still believe that in Nigeria, God will give us the opportunity to be there. Now looking at it very well, I think by and large, Nigeria will be there. It may take us time. But my belief is that each and every one of us, et us forget about politics, let us leave politics for the politicians, let us business people do business as business. Now I think what is most important for us is to be able to determine which direction we want to go. For me. I like to project to make sure that Nigeria as a country will have the opportunity of bringing investors into the country, I have done that many times, to invest in Nigeria for us to move forward particularly for the middle class. In Nigeria at the moment, it is neither you are here nor you are there. We should be able to change this scenario. Therefore, I am just trying to tell you that in Signature Global Estate, we are focusing principally on Africa. Our major concern is Africa. Signature has been invited by the Angola Government through the Angola Chamber of Commerce, and by God’s grace, our team will be going there to do a road show on the 20th of June this year. Our focus is Africa. Africa has a lot of investment. Nigeria’s status in this respect is number one. But the problem we have is for us to have a very good profile. At the moment we are not doing very well but very soon we will be okay.

What do you want to achieve with your Vision and Mission

What is our vision and mission…Our vision and mission is to be one of the five top estate investment advisors in the UAE, and to be number one African real estate advisor and broker in the region. Africa invests  so much  in real estate but the problem  is when they are investing they do not know where to invest, they do not know which one is the best location. They do not know how much to invest to get the best returns on investment. This is where Signature comes in.

What are your core values

What are our core values? Our core values are very important. The first thing with Signature is trust. If there is no trust there is no business. The foundation of any business is trust. We want people to trust us, we want to trust people. When we trust each other, everything is excellent. At Signature, we take trust as one of our core values. You can give us business and go to sleep. The next thing is integrity. Integrity is very important. In Yoruba culture our forefathers say: ‘Ti o ba nwa owo lo, ti o ba owo ati  iyi lona,  ki lo ma mu?’ (You are looking for money and on your way. This is money, this is integrity, which one will you go for?). In fact any reasonable man will go for integrity because if you have integrity you have money. If you do not have integrity you have nothing. As a matter of fact, culturally, go and check the Yorubas, value is given pre-eminence. But today all that is important to us is money, money, money. We at Signature lay a high premium on integrity. Then the third thing is professionalism. Professionalism when you look at it, has been thrown to the dogs.  In Dubai there is what is called RERA – Real Estate Regulation Authority. We are trying to see how we can work with Lagos State Government so that they can key in, at least a little bit into this system. That professionalism is very key. So at Signature we make sure we adhere to professionalism very well. In Dubai, you must follow their regulations to the letter because you cannot do anything without this. …you must follow the rule of the law. The business environment in Nigeria is unfriendly. To export products from Nigeria, government officials will demand money from you.

What Signature does

Signature Global does residential and commercial property sales. We handle the business from day one to the end.  We do property business through developers like Sobha .We help with documentation. We help in searching the status of properties through our system. Your rent never comes to us as a broker. In Dubai the broker does not touch money. It is a rule in Dubai. All we do is to get our brokerage commission. We do property management.

Employer/employee relationship

I take my employees as assets. I am the team leader. All of us brainstorm. Of course I have the last say. I am in the driver’s seat. But all the same, all my employees are part of the team. In my workplace we have 10 professionals speaking different languages. We have Arabs, Chinese, Indians, Pakistani, and English.

Benefits doing business in Dubai

There are benefits to doing business in Dubai. Ownership of houses is freehold, tax free purchases, infrastructure is superb. Go there and see. Yield is high, that is return on investment. The money you will make from one bedroom flat is far in excess of what you make from a four/ five bedroom flat in Nigeria. I tell people when you go Dubai do not think about the Naira conversion rate. If you do, you won’t eat.