By Chinenye Anuforo
Mr. Augustine Ejiofor is the Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer, PWAN Royale Investment and Development Limited, a subsidiary of PWAN Group.
PWAN is a group of reliable real estate and property management companies that provides home ownership and investments opportunities that cater to the needs of anyone desiring to invest in real estate. In this interview with Daily Sun, Ejiofor spoke about PWAN Royale and other industry related issues.
Excerpts:
In 2023, the housing deficit stood at 28m. How can we bridge it sincerely speaking?
PWAN is a very big company and we understand that there is a big challenge of housing deficit nationally. Now, what we have been able to do is to set our presence in almost all the states of the federation. We are in about 34 different states in Nigeria and what do we do? We buy properties around that those areas, develop the properties, and of course, teach the indigenes how to do our real estate business, both, the networking aspect and the sales aspect. With what we’re doing, we are building houses, providing money for them to build their own houses through the avenue we provide for them to make their own money. Our sales and networking aspect provide them a good source of income. And so, we empower them financially to be home owners and this goes a long way to reducing the housing deficit in Nigeria.
How affordable are your services?
Our services are very much affordable. The company itself was founded on the need for accommodation by the founders. How did it start? The founders (Dr. Augustine Onwumere and Dr. Jayne Onwumere), who were couple were actually looking for only 300,000 then in 2012 to be able to rent the house for themselves. So, because we understand the challenges, when it has to do with accommodation and finance, what we have done, is to make sure we make our properties very much affordable. We don’t just go to the cities or hybrid areas like Ikoyi and Lekki to build houses and want people to come and buy. No, what we do is to go to fast developing areas, buy properties and then develop that area, and make houses affordable for people. How do we make this possible? We do this by giving them payment plans. We have very comfortable payment plans. There are some properties we say, if you have money you can buy at once. We have the one off payment plan. We have three months. We have six month payment plan. We have 12 month, 18 months and even 24 months payment plan. So, depending on your pocket, you will be able to know which one is suitable for you.
As a real estate firm, what step(s) would you advise an average Nigerian worker take to acquire a house?
The steps they should take to make sure they acquire a house which is very important because aside from mobility, accommodation is another important aspect of life and very major. What we expect them to do is to key into organizations like ours and the opportunities we offer. Now, they can key in as individuals and they can key in through the corporatives of their organizations, if it’s not something they can do on their own. We have a lot of companies who do that. The cooperatives because they have bulk money, they can come and buy these properties from us and then even make it more affordable for their members. Because we do payment plan of between three months to 24 months, these corporatives can even decide to do for five years for their staff thereby making it more affordable for them. We have a lot of cooperative that do this at the moment.
For those that are not working in organizations where they have corporatives, they can key in on their own. They can partner with us, tell us which states they want properties in Lagos, Abuja, Owerri, Awka or anywhere. They can key into this and we work with their payment plan, and their own level of income, and make very comfortable payment plans for them.
How can we detect a fake real estate firm to avoid being swindled? What are the red flags to watch out for? What due diligence should subscribers do before parting with their money?
There are a lot of real estate firm in this country and for every time there’s a real substance, there’s a fake substance. Whether you are in medics or anywhere. Once, it is real, there’s always a counterfeit of it. Of course, we have a lot of fake, dubious real estate companies that end up swindling people of their hard earned money. A lot of people go into real estate here unlike in the diaspora like in Europe and America, you don’t jump in and start doing real estate. You have to be certified to be able to do real estate in these countries, but in Nigeria, the sector is so porous, that you can decide to come in and do how you want to do. So, for you to be able to mitigate against swindlers in the system, you have to first do your due diligence. Don’t just jump into an opportunity because a company says, oh, we have a property. Check their antecedents, references and check their history. When did they start? Have they delivered? How many properties have they been able to deliver. Browse them online and go as far as doing due diligence on that particular property. You want to buy a property, don’t jump in because somebody has marketed it to you. Collect details. If it’s a land, collect coordinates, go and chart that coordinates. Make sure they have not built on a government reserved plots or in a plot where government has interest. Picking the coordinates and charting it in the registry will be able to tell you whether that land is committed or not. If it’s not committed, that is the first part of it. Again, do the due diligence with documentations with them. Make sure you bring your lawyer to the company and that they do document for every payment you make, be sure you get your receipt of payment. Make sure you get your contract of sale and make sure you get every other documents. So, it’s not really hard to know a fake company. But, the challenge there is that people are not patient enough to do their due diligence. That’s why they’re being scammed most of the time.
What are the challenges in this job?
The truth is that most countries that have been developed are developed not by governments, but by businesses, capitalists, entrepreneurs. The individual, the masses are the ones that develop a country and that is what we’re doing. But, part of the challenges we have are the governments. Government makes it very difficult for us to acquire some of these properties. Government makes it very hectic for us to be able to do the documentations. Now, for some states, for you to even get excision on a land, it takes about four years or even more. One of the states where we function, a particular government was in power for like four years and did not give even one excision. So, those things limits us in operations.
What can government do to help people operating in the sector?
Good. The government should give us an enabling environment to thrive. They should make it a lot easier for us to get documentations for our land. We want to do a Certificate of Occupancy (C-of-O), this shouldn’t take more than a month, at least it shouldn’t take more than two months. Give us your criteria but for most of states before you able to get your documentations you have to start bribing your way, sorting your way from hand to hand and makes it very worrisome and very discouraging. So, if the government can give us an enabling environment and make the processes seamless for us to be able to get our documentation and perfect our documents, of course, it will really go a long way in helping our businesses.
Tell us about some of your services?
We have a lot of packages here in PWAN Royale aside from the normal land sales and purchases. We have the network marketing aspect of it and then, one of the products we equally have is the, ‘Buy to Sell’. Buy to Sell is an opportunity for you to trade land, to trade real estate the same way you trade Forex and the same way you treat gold. So, you actually trading land when you key in to the Buy to Sell. This is the way it works. You can buy a particular property from us maybe a million naira, because that’s our basics, in 12 months, we’re going to buy that property back from you at 30%. Now, how does that work? Instead of going to the bank to collect loan and then because equally a lot of banks make it very difficult for people, companies and establishments to collect loans and get to the next level. They start telling you some interesting conditions that before you able to finish meeting the conditions, the purpose, for which you wanted the loan has gone wrong. So, we give people this opportunity to trade their lands back to us. So, if you buy a property of one million naira, we’ll give you a signed postdated Cheque of N1.3 million which will be due in 12 months time. Apart from that, we will give you a receipt of payment and a contract of sale. The contract of sale is an MOU that binds the company with you, that stipulates the condition for this contract. Now, in 12 months, you decide whether you want to keep the land or you want the 1.3 million naira. So, if you want the 1.3 million naira, the only thing you need to do, is to go to the bank with your Cheque and then cash your money without even coming to us that you are going to the bank. You don’t need to do that because the account is funded. However, if you want to keep the land, you return our postdated Cheque to us and we will do a proper land document for you for that land. This business is actually good for a lot of people that have idle funds. You have idle funds in the bank. If you keep a millionaire naira in the bank, after 12 months you’re probably going to get 60,000 Naira or 40,000 as the case may be, that is if you don’t make withdrawal up to four times from that account. The same thing is with when have 10 million naira. Don’t keep idle funds in the bank, trade with them. So, imagine doing a Buy to Sell with us with 10 million naira, in 12 months, you are making 13 million naira.
How secured is this investment?
It very, very secured. It is as secure as we are. PWAN Group is 12 years old, PWAN Royale is five years old but this Buy to Sell has been on in the company as a Group for more than seven years. I am sure, if we had any business gone wrong, it would have been reported by the media. Secondly, you understand that a bounced cheque is a criminal offense. So, if you give somebody a postdated cheque, that’s one of the guarantees in business. When you give somebody a postdated cheque and that cheque bounces, EFCC will pick that person up. Thirdly, we have properties in different states of the federation. So, what it means is that, your funds are secured with us because we have properties tied to them. So, if for any reason which have not happened before, you say, you don’t want the money, you want property, we have properties everywhere, all we need to do is to allocate you property equivalent to your fund.
How does you see the real estate industry in the next 10 years in Nigeria?
In the next 10 years in Nigeria, if things are done right, if the government do the needful, if they creates an enabling environment, our real estate will be able to compete favorably with every and any other country’s real estate because at the moment, real estate is one of the surest means of investments. It is one of the safest business and one of the most profitable business to do. PWAN Group under our direct employment, we have over 800 staff and we have more than 400,000 direct marketers cut across more the nation and each of these people both our direct staff and marketers have people they directly or indirectly feed. So, with this, if given the enabling environment to operate, you will see that real estate business in Nigeria will go a long way in eradicating poverty to very large extent, bringing about developments in the in the country to a very large extent and of course, the IGR that is bringing especially to Lagos State, Abuja and some other states, it’s really helpful to the states.
What’s the place of technology in real estate business?
Well, you can’t grow more than you are doing today without innovation. Technology has revolutionize the real estate sector. Before now, you must have to go to the land you want to buy to see it, before you buy it. Today, through the use of technology, we have people buying properties from Canada, from Europe, America and around the world while this properties are here in Nigeria. ICT has a very large role to play in the real estate sector especially when it has to do with innovations.