Mortgage expert urges surveyors to invest in property market data
Mortgage expert and Chairman of the Board, Lagos Building Investment Company Plc, Hakeem Ogunniran, has charged estate surveyors and valuers to invest in building and maintaining real estate and property market data.
Ogunniran made the call at the unveiling of the 50th anniversary logo of the Nigerian Institute of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, Lagos State Branch in Lagos.
Speaking on the significance of real estate data to the mortgage industry, the former Managing Director of UACN Property Development Company Plc stated that data had become very critical to business.
He noted that data and business were in partnership, while any smart business decision must have accurate data guiding it.
He lamented that nobody has accurate data about the number of assets being created at any point in time, so it is a big problem for the mortgage industry.
Accordingly, he said that if one doesn’t know how many assets are created and where they are being created, it will be difficult to make business decisions.
He also declared that lack of data hinders off-takers profiling, which should show eligibility, age, income group as well as home preferences for real estate investments.
These data, he said also help to facilitate mortgage origination as insight into customers and borrowers was needed.
Ogunniran charged realtors and the private sector to champion the business data project for the country, stressing that there is a lot of harmful competition in this industry; hence not sharing data among professionals is causing harm to your business.
He maintained that the private sector should actually take responsibility for business data and start on our own as professionals instead of relying on the government for data.
The Chairman of NIESV, Lagos State Branch, Adedotun Bamigbola, commended Ogunniran, and revealed that his branch had taken up the challenge to build reliable data on real estate investment and development in Lagos.
The branch, Bamigbola said, had embarked on a flagship data project called ‘The Lagos Property Market Consensus Report’, whose maiden edition was released in August 2020 for the first half of the year.
He noted that 178 real estate firms, which are members of the Lagos Branch of NIESV, contributed to the property data project.
