-
LAGOS Property Player, Engr. WALE POPOOLA
Highbridge Homes has become one of the most active real estate firms in the last few years. The company which has been doing well in the area of land banking has also in the last few months gotten deep in housing construction.
The MD, Engr Olawale Popoola, is a man behind the popular real estate firm.
Last week, City People Publisher, SEYE KEHINDE and ISAAC ABIMBADE, paid him a courtesy visit in his office. He was delighted to City People came down and he opened up about the story behind the success of his real estate firm and many other challenges facing the sector. Below are excerpts of the interview.
Can you share some of the objectives of the company with us?
We take pride in doing things right at Highbridge Homes. We can uphold your integrity. We don’t shift off-balance your aims and objectives. We also stick with our missions. We ensure we operate a client-centric organization, whereby if there’s any challenge with our client we can sit down and solve them.
The government aspect is another thing, especially in Lagos State because every state has dynamic structures for handling the housing structure, especially the real estate.
One of the challenge we have noticed with the government is not being able to harness all the real estate companies to come together and even the government does not know the number of real estate company that exist in the state.
Some of us are opportuned to be in a real estate associations like REDAN, which I’m also part of in Lagos and Ogun State. I am an exco in Ogun State but most of my projects are here in Lagos. We have a very formidable REDAN in the South-West. In fact, the South-West is the only place where REDAN is well-pronounced in Nigeria and the reason is not far-fetched, South-West has Lagos State which is the commercial city of the country. And we also have other South-West states surrounding it, which does help, as well. Today, Lagos REDAN is the biggest in the country. Even at the REDAN national they recognise us a lot even more than Abuja.
The government does not really have a way of encouraging us but from time to time we come together at the state chapter of REDAN in Lagos where we engage the government, especially Lagos State. Because we have realized that if we fail to engage them, their policy may affect our business. We let them know that a certain policy doesn’t favour us and it’s affecting our operation in the state. And in the few times, we have had encounters and engagement with the government agencies, it has yielded an eye-opening experience and policies, government laws were exposed to some of us.
This is helping the association and real estate in Lagos and we still want the government to do more. This era of building collapse and demolition of various structures, some of these things can be avoided if there was synergy. We want the government to control us. We are not rejecting their coordination. Because if they leave us, we tend to do whatever we want because by nature everybody wants to do whatever they want, but if the policy of the government is very strong we would all be compelled to act within the structure and framework of the government. We won’t have all these illegal structures and demolition. It’s pathetic.
How did you cope with the beginning of the year when we had the election and how did you deal with the slow start of business at the beginning of the year?
The anxiety and the panic of the election made the real estate business to start very slow. It’s an eye-opener to some of us. The fear of tribal, ethnicity and the choice of people; we want this person, we don’t want this person. A lot of people who are not Yoruba and are based in Lagos State were not ready to invest in Lagos State. A stop was put to real estate activities for a short while. But a lot of us were at the fore front to preach to them. There is nothing like someone is not part of Lagos, we are together. As long as we have a president who belongs to everyone, we just have to be together. Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, we are all the same. Things are just coming up gradually but we are still not at the pace they used to be.
Why did you go into real estate as at the time you started?
Real estate has been what I have loved because I like to provide shelter. I started real estate like play. I started as a site engineer because I have a civil engineering background. I was managing artisans on site and also managing senior colleagues who didn’t have the practical experience I have. So from there I transformed and set up a real estate company which was called Highbridge City which was around 2012. I couldn’t register a company so I started using using the one I registered to take up some contracts. After a while I moved into land banking which was moving then and it was then I registered Highbridge Homes and that was how it all started. We registered Highbridge Homes in 2019.
If you compare the time you started to where you are now, how can you describe it?
The change is really tremendous. Because we didn’t have the type of innovation we have now. Now you can sell real estate successfully with just being online because it’s more easier to sell now online. That era, we usually used banners and other traditional marketing methods to sell.
In the last months, you have been doing a lot of development as regards building houses. How can you compare the two; selling land and building houses to sell?
Yes, it’s more challenging to build houses than to sell land. It’s like someone who sells clothes: It’s easier to sell than someone who sews it… It takes a lot of mental strength because you are dealing with a lot of artisans. But it’s really interesting and if you ask me, I think it’s the best part of real estate because building structures is more critical than selling land. Selling a house means people would see what you have used their money to do but land people have to wait.. Some land are bought for investment purposes.
How do you deal with some real estate bottlenecks where a land is sold for two people and on the day of allocation that is when you are getting to know the truth?
It all still boils down to due diligence. Like a say in Yoruba “eni nwa’fa nwo’fo”. Most of the time, some of these challenges have symptoms that will appear to you but some other factors build up in you can make you fall into that and what are those factors? Someone wants to sell a fake land or land without a good title or land that he or she knows he had sold to someone before but because the people he sold to haven’t developed and you want to resell because you need money. Some of the documentation you ask you will start seeing some foul play but because the price you want to buy that property is ridiculously low. A land that you know is worth 10 million naira, the person can tell you to bring 2.5 million naira or below. So you now feel it’s a good deal. So at that point you discontinue the due diligence again. That is how sometimes we fall into that trap. But if we say sometimes we don’t see those signs it’s a lie.
Sometimes we usually lose money. In real estate business if you haven’t lost money I don’t think you have started. Someone somewhere will dupe you. Just pray it’s not too much to bear. That is why the number of cases related to land grabbing in police stations today is high.
