A real estate developer, Omotayo Odumade, says Lagos State has sweet policies and regulatory bodies to put to check the shoddy works of developers in the construction of buildings in the state.
In a statement on Thursday, Odumade said the incessant collapse of buildings in Lagos in recent times will become a thing of the past if the regulatory bodies can do their jobs in line with the real estate policies of the state.
Odumade, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Darryl Homes Nigeria Limited, a real estate outfit noted for its excellence since coming on board in 2017, believes that the real estate industry is huge and offers opportunities for participants in the sector to generate revenue.
“The govt has turned the real estate industry into revenue generating sector. The government has made sweet policies and set up regulatory bodies to put developers in check, but in the long run, they still serve as revenue-generating means for themselves,” he said.
Odumade, an alumnus of the prestigious Lagos Business School, where he studied Agriculture Business Management, took a swipe at real estate developers, who derive joy in cutting corners in the execution of their projects at the detriment of the sector and the citizenry.
“Cutting corners is an old-fashioned tactic in real estate. From experience, most of the corner cutters have blamed themselves in the long run. Let me give you a practical example, we have properties that stay a year or more in the market before they are sold, for a developer that has cut corners in painting for example, he will have to repaint and repaint before he gets his property sold out, which means he must have spent times three of the initial painting cost as a result of the delay in selling off his property.
“Another example is houses that have cracks, the Lekki-Ajah axis for example, it’s a water-filled land that mostly requires pile foundations, and some developers cut corners and will do just raft foundations and neglect the piling just because they want to be cost-effective.
“In the long run, their houses crack and they have to sometimes demolish or spend extra cost to repair what should have been done properly. So corner cutting most times is also a disadvantage to developers that do such,” Odumade added.
The University of Ilorin graduate, who is also into livestock farming with Darryl Farmville Nigeria Limited and sees himself as a ‘work-in-progress businessman’, believes that it is time for managers of the real estate industry to embrace technology in their construction work where Darryl Homes stand out among its competitors in the sector.
“This is a technology world and I can confirm to you that in Darryl Homes, every stage of our construction work is visually recorded. At Darryl Homes, we invite our clients and show them the building process of their house from the beginning till the end, we have it all Video recorded. I am proud to say at Darryl Homes we don’t cut corners and we don’t use inferior products,” he stated further.
