Proven Low Cost Housing Strategies to Construct Your House

If you are searching for proven low cost housing strategies to construct your house, then take time to digest this article. I will be sharing with you some proven tips that will help you to construct affordable income apartment with ease.

Most middle and low income earners aspiring to become landlords are getting frustrated because of different forms of challenges manifesting in the country’s economy.

These challenges centred on the high cost of building materials, cost, time and near impossible processes involved in securing good title, problems encountered while trying to get loans from banks, back and forth wranglings with the so called omoniles.

If you manage to resolve the aforementioned, the challenge of erecting the house, which comes at a high and alarming price, will now be the only hurdle you have to cross in becoming a proud home-owner

For instance, a year ago the price of a bag of cement rose to between N2,700 – N3,200, while some government officials could insist on collecting bribe before processing land documents for people. These are notable bottlenecks you need to survive from if you are to become a proud home-owner.

According to recent statistics, Nigeria requires additional 17 million houses to solve the deficit that plagues her teeming population

Despite these problems, the prominent real estate companies in Nigeria have been proffering solutions to help middle class and low income earners to build affordable housing apartment without much ado.

It’s important to note that these strategies will work for you only if you are committed to the project; because it will demand financial sacrifices. But your level of commitment will allow you to close your eyes to some luxuries to achieve your dream of owning a low cost housing apartment.

Below are some proven tips you can apply to achieve your dream of building a low cost housing apartment with ease:

• Opportunity to Spread Land Payment: If you cannot afford to make outright payment for the land of your choice. Many of the prominent real estate companies provide an alternative method to spread payment for the land for about 12-24 months and sometimes over. You can take advantage of such opportunity to buy land and pay a token either from your salary or business as the case may be. After completing the payment, you can gradually commence the construction of your house.                                                                           

  In my company, Realty Point Limited, we have hundreds of our clients that apply this strategy to build low cost housing apartment. Today, they have succeeded in sacking their landlords and owning a house. The key to success? Well, among all other things, utilising a Local Bricklayer who can save you time and money, while doing an excellent job.

• Join a Housing Cooperative Society: One proven strategy of building an affordable housing apartment is by joining a housing co-operative society. As a member, you are offered loans with low interest rate. This form of housing loans has helped many people to finance their house project with ease. 

  How it works is that cooperative society members pool resources together to finance the construction of low cost housing apartment for members. It is a way out of shelter problem. It foster togetherness, provides and puts available resources at the doorsteps of members to actualize home ownership. This form of loan helps affordability

• Rent To Own: A rent-to-own situation takes place when a tenant or potential tenant is given an option of becoming the owner of a property after a length of time whilst paying a specific amount monthly/yearly or having reached an agreement with the landlord and using after paying an initial lump sum amount..

It is like bringing lease finance into housing; you pay an initial lump sum, pay periodic rentals for a period and then pay a scrape value or whatever nomenclature it is called to totally own the property.

Rent-to-own offers a transition, maybe, in the simplest and best alternative available at becoming a landlord. It creates the right and seemingly leveled platform for the average Nigerian to own a house.

In plain terms, rent to home offers an alternative to mortgage. Realty Point Limited also offers this initiative the Cedar Homes Project. To learn more, visit; www.realtypoinltd.com/cedarhomes

• Design Economy

Ensure that the architect designing the plan for your house focuses on essentials such as the sitting, dining      room(s)and kitchen. Areas such as laundry, extra family lounge, etc are not necessities and can be omitted.

The size of the house also must be appropriate because the bigger a house or an apartment the more the cost of      construction. For example, in order to achieve low income house, a 3 bedroom house should not be occupying         more than between 80 -90sqm.

• Use Professionals for each aspect of the project

The key to the success of low cost housing strategy is to use professionals for each aspect of the project.

One of the ways people lose money when they are building their houses is by enlisting the services of quacks in    place of professionals. You can negotiate a professional’s fee rather than avoiding his services altogether.

To get quality job done on your project, you will have to look for very good workmen and ensure they have          quality supervision. Do not use a bricklaying expert to supervise roofing otherwise you may end up with        shoddy job.

Finally, do regular monitoring and supervision of your low cost housing project. That will help you to save         money you could have lost to labourers and artisans.

DEBO ADEJANA
MD/CEO, Realty Point Limited