By Maduka Nweke
In order to sustain the tempo and remain in business, most real estate operators have resorted to innovation. Most of them are designing instruments that will appeal to their clients while others resort to giving incentives and facilities to cushion the effect of inflation and hardship in the land.
According to PWAN Royale’s Managing Director, Mr. Augustine Ejiofor, the free fall of the naira is affecting everyone and everything but with innovation, we are managing the situation. “The country’s dependence on imported materials and stuffs should be revisited by government so that we can begin to mitigate some of these effects on the cost of living.
“Imagine the shock when you bought cement at N6,000 today and go back the next week to hear that the price is now N8,500 per bag and the next day you buy less or even higher. Some developers have had to halt a lot of projects for them to watch what happens next. We are keeping hope alive seeing that the government is doing something about it and we hope they get a solution soonest. As a nation, I believe we need to do something to reduce our dependence on imported materials. Our nation should not be a dumping ground. The funny thing is that majority of these imported materials can be produced in Nigeria and exported abroad.
“Imagine companies that use largely foreign doors like us, Nigerians are the ones that export the timbers abroad. They develop the timbers and produce doors and then we import the doors into Nigeria to use. It is funny. How can we be a nation that exports raw materials and import finished products? All we need to do is to make the environment right and friendly for local industries to spring up and begin to cover these gaps,” he stated.
According to Innocent Meckson Okoro fondly called MI Okoro, the Principal Partner of MI Okoro and Associates, things keep rising on a daily basis yet the salaries of workers remained stagnant and not reviewed. “Some states added 10 per cent to the worker’s salaries while others added mere N10,000 to the pay depending on what is the worker’s salary. How much was the increase? It cannot affect it at all. If price of renting a house or home is rising, it will not be because of this little increase in the salary. In some people’s purse, there is nothing like salary increase. What is 10 per cent of N50,000? What is 10 per cent of N100,000 that can help to jerk up price of buying or renting a house? So, in short, prices of houses cannot be affected either positively or negatively by the little salary increase,” he asked.