Segun Ayinde, Abeokuta
Chief Executive Officer of Pellican Valley Nigeria Limited, Dr. Babatunde Adeyemo, has urged the federal government to give out single digit interest loan to real estate entrepreneurs to reduce housing deficit in the country.
Adeyemo equally charged FG to work on foreign exchange rate to readjust the economy and bring down the prices of goods and services especially that of building materials to make quality houses affordable to Nigerians
He disclosed this when Mr Johnson Akinpelu, the Publisher of Boseri – a Yoruba newspaper and his team visited his office at Pellican Valley Estate, Laderin, Abeokuta, to give him an award as the “Oba Awon Abulesowo Ile Yoruba”.
The real estate mogul, said that for FG to tackle the problem of housing deficit, it needed to sustain the foreign exchange rate to stabilize the economy and look out for real estate entrepreneurs who has prudence and integrity and give them lite loan in order to build quality affordable housing units for low income earners.
He said mentioned lack of favourable government policies and housing schemes, high cost of construction materials and properties as well as lack of credit to potential estate entrepreneurs as the major cause of housing deficit in the country.
Adeyemo, who said that lack of funding had deprived real estate investors to build more houses for low income earners, appealed to President Bola Tinubu to consider granting the loan to estate entrepreneurs not only to reduce housing deficit but to also to save lives by avoiding building collapse.
He said ” the federal government have a lot to do to ameliorate the suffering of the masses and also to boost the real estate business in Nigeria. The number is to tackle the economy generally. Bad economy and inflation is the problem. The best thing the federal government can do is to work on the economy of which I believe the leadership of Bola Armed Tinubu is doing to his best to control the foreign exchange rate in the right direction.”
“By the time they are able to control sustain the forex and bring it down totally, the economy will readjust, you can’t expect a magic overnight. Bringing down the forex within one, two, three months you can’t expect the prices of good and services, cannot automatically bring down the prices of goods and services, they need to first sustain that fluctuation, if you are bringing it down, you bring it down to 1000 per dollar and you are able to sustain for like six months automatically things will start readjusting.”
“You can just bring it down to 1000 today and tomorrow is 1,200 per dollar. So we are still in the process of adjusting the fluctuation now. So if you are working on the economy you need to also gather people that have that integrity and character especially the real estate entrepreneurs who have that integrity, prudence and characters. You know channel some funds to them to assist so they can build a low income earners housing units for the Nigerian who are in need. It is a simple law of demand when you have a lot of houses it will bring reducing houses in cost of housing but if you don’t have this there is nothing we can do.”
”Housing cannot be affordable for now with the kind of economy we have. The real estate entrepreneurs or federal government are not the producers of cements or iron or own a quarry and once those building materials are on the high side, there is no way you can get an affordable home for low income earners, you don’t want a building collapse, if you don’t want that you have to build a quality to taste and if you want to build a quality houses you have to spend alot, you can’t earn peanuts to buy a quality house. You can’t leave beyond what you have. Even federal government can’t leave the debt services and put everything to subsidy housing.”
“All federal government need to do is to make land available to genuine real estate investors like us and give us lite funding. So with the support of government if they can provide a single digit interest loan to real estate entrepreneurs the journey that took me 15 years I would have been there in less than three or two and half years and once we have that luxury of fund we will be able to expend, build more houses and in the long run it will reduce the housing deficits in the country but once we don’t have that luxury of fund I have to live within my reach and once we don’t have much houses in circulation the housing deficits cannot reduce.” he added.