Investors latch on social media for business strategy, wealth creation in real estate

From the ridiculous to the sublime, the social media is spreading, gaining penetration and impacting positively on various sectors of the global economy, including real estate where its use has raised the bar in marketing and sales, investment and wealth creation.

Real estate investors, developers, vendors, facilities managers and other service providers are increasingly employing this platform to enhance business strategy and increase their share of the market.

At a property buyers’ forum jointly organised by 3Invest, Nigeria’s premier real estate consulting and advocacy company, and Social Media Week 2014, in Lagos, participants were surprised at how investors had leveraged social media to help and grow their business.

In her presentation at the forum with the theme, ‘Building Your Property Ladder Through Social Media,’ Ruth Obih, 3Invest CEO, highlighted effective use of social media as a business tool, emphasising that a successful use of social media required a plan while investors must narrow their focus to determine what platform their target audience were on.

“Social media is all about online networking and engagement; it is an opportunity to excite and inform,” she said, pointing out that real estate social media had been adopted by the sector professionals to generate more leads to their business through “networking and marketing to the target niche.”

Tunji Osinulu of ARM Properties agreed, affirming that the use of online platform helped to increase sale of their award winning Lakowe Lakes Golf and Country Estate such that “over 70 percent of the sales we’ve made on Lakowe Lakes Golf have come from our website.”

Tayo Sonuga, CEO of Haven Homes Limited, developer of lifestyle homes, commended 3Invest for its efforts in this regard, disclosing that “when Haven Homes first got on social media, we were educated by 3Invest on the mechanism used to direct traffic to our site, and today we are better for it.”

In his presentation on ‘Online Benchmarking Tools in Facility Management,’ Femi Akintunde, managing director/CEO, Alpha Mead Facilities Management Company, said “because real estate was a wealth creating asset, it is essential to benchmark it with the FM online benchmarking system that enables practitioners to measure what their peers are doing.”

Officials of Diamond Bank, who were at the event, took their time to educate participants on the procedures for accessing mortgages in line with the recent developments within the sector where the federal and Lagos State governments had floated mortgage finance schemes to assist low-income earners to own homes.

A visibly elated Obih said the event, which was the second edition of Property Buyers’ Forum, was hosted annually by 3Invest, and was designed to connect home sellers and buyers.

BusinessDay