Inflation Eroding Nigerians’ Purchasing Power, Say Property Developers
OluchiChibuzor
Developers in the country have expressed worries over the high rate of inflation in the country, saying it was eroding purchasing power to acquire quality housing in the country.
This was as they are also expressed concern about the impact of multiple regulatory bodies in the real estate industry.
Speaking during their fifth anniversary, the Chief Executive Officer, Hontar Projects, DejiFasunwon, said one of the factors hindering affordability in the housing sector was because the nation was not producing materials needed in the sector.
According to him, “There are so many factors that are instrumental to the issue of affordability of houses. So a large chunk of our building materials are imported, and it is impacted by exchange rates and ultimately on cost of construction. And sadly, the purchasing power of people is not matching the way inflation is moving. And so it’s making housing difficult.
“Now, one of the things that the government can do is to provide funding, long-term, for home acquisition. But the situation where we have interest rates that are in excess of 10, 20, 30 percent, makes it very difficult.
“Cement now is upwards of N10,000 per bag; iron rod is over N1.2 million per ton, and the cost of labour is going up and everything is going up.”
However, as a firm, he noted that, “one good thing about us is that there’s no project that will commence without obtaining the requisite approval. That’s another selling point for us. Every other project has approval.”
He lamented the inconsistency regarding obtaining approval in the sector, adding that a single window was required to reduce the cost for developers.
According to him, “We are having consistent increases in approval costs. Now and then, I mean, you go to apply for approval today, this amount, but then you are doing your next approval, the money just jumps again. And if the government could just allow us, maybe just look at this cost.
“It will help us a lot. And then you now have a multiplicity of agencies under the same government. So you have the building control, physical planning, safety, fire service, and local government. So we can just streamline it and just remove all these bureaucratic bottlenecks. It will help us ease things a lot and make life easier for everybody.”
In his contribution, Managing Director, Harvestfield Industries Limited, Mr. Martins Awofisayo, urged off-plan subscribers to be on the lookout for defrauders when patronising developers.
“Having burnt my fingers in the past, I have monitored Hontar Projects for a long time and I can attest to their credibility in delivering projects on schedule timeline,” he said.
