By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Over 1,000 houses would be delivered to Nigerians by the end of the second quarter of 2022, the managing director of Landwey Investment Limited, Ms Shola Bello, has disclosed.
This is part of the efforts being made by Landwey, which is one of Nigeria’s largest residential developers, in reducing the housing deficit in the country.
Ms Bello, in a chat with newsmen on Monday, noted that the company has been able to deploy measures to mitigate the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant economic recession in the real estate sector in Nigeria.
“2022 began on a rough note for most real estate developers in Nigeria. This has been made obvious by the growing apprehension amongst some clients over the viability of their investment owing to delayed delivery of housing units and some publications addressing these issues.
“Many developers in Nigeria have openly addressed some of the challenges experienced in the course of construction and delivery of housing projects, a challenge which is largely attributed to the impact of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant economic recession.
“In the past few years, many developers have had to navigate the harsh economy and its severe impact on all businesses across many industries. While it may appear that many of these businesses have recovered from the impact, the story is not quite the same for the real estate industry.
“The industry has felt its huge blow from resultant factors ranging from scarcity of labour, a challenge we have since overcome, scarcity of building materials, unfavourable importation policies, long project approval timelines as well as other environmental limitations.
“However, our clients are always at the forefront of everything that we do, therefore, we have had no other choice but to unearth new and creative solutions in order to mitigate the rippling effects of the pandemic and the harsh realities of the global economy,” she told journalists.
The real estate guru lamented that most real estate development companies had to reassess and adjust their operations to acclimate to the “new atmosphere by working and negotiating potential changes in project completion timelines and the management of their internal and external workforce, communicating challenges and progress updates routinely with investors and reviewing supply agreements with suppliers while also determining the impacts of delays in our delivery obligations as well as other potential risk factors.”
She added that after what appeared to be a challenging Q1, the company is now making a headway on housing project delivery with a mass delivery of homes scheduled to take place at the end of the second quarter.
“I can assure you, by the third quarter of 2022, we would be well on our way to completing at least 1000 homes,” Ms Bello concluded.
Adedapo Adesanya