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Firm restates commitment to tackling housing deficit

Oluwasina Phillip

A real estate firm, Octo5 Holdings, has again reaffirmed its commitment to making affordable housing accessible to Nigerians.

The Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mr Babajide Odusolu, made the statement during the handover of Heron’s Beak Residences, a vertical community of medium-rise apartments recently completed by the company.

He said, “We believe that the increasingly changing demographics of housing demand require varied solutions and most cannot be addressed by the government. The key to meeting the growing demand is to innovate solutions that empower young professionals and families to own or rent homes with ease.”

He added that projects like Heron’s Beak Residences were deliberately designed to encourage and meet the needs of young families and many professionals who now work remotely by creating wholesome communities while guaranteeing good returns to investor landlords.

He said until the average professional can comfortably own a house using monthly income or mortgages, the housing problem would remain insurmountable.

Odusolu said that although the exact size of the housing deficit might be debatable, the urgent need for homes with good infrastructure cannot disputed as the World Bank estimates that Nigeria would need to provide at least 700,000 units of houses annually to meet its deficit.

The Octo5 boss believes that while efforts such as the National Social Housing Programme, set up by the government to make social housing a reality, are commendable, the challenge remains funding the significant demand for serviced communities and middle-income homes.

According to him, federal and state governments should offer fiscal incentives to capable developers and guarantee off-take for public sector workers.

He said with such incentives, serious developers would acquire viable land and build homes to address the challenges aggressively.

He stated that when the Heron’s Beak Residences project was inaugurated, the off-plan introductory prices of N25m and N36m were deliberately set below prevailing rates to encourage early investors and that all those who took advantage of the offers have reaped good value for their investments.

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