- Real Estate, Viable for Economic Diversification – Broll Nigeria
The Chief Executive Officer of real estate investment firm, Broll Nigeria, Mr. Bolaji Edu, says real estate is a viable industry for economic diversification.
At the recently held West African Property Investment Summit 2017 in Lagos, where Broll was the platinum sponsor, Edu said Nigeria had heightened investment potential among the comity of nations as the real estate industry was expected to grow at an average rate of 5.39 per cent between 2017 and 2020.
According to him, Nigeria has proven to be a power house in West Africa and has great potential to attract investors.
Edu stated, “It is time for the country to diversify to other sectors of the economy and real estate has proven to be a viable sector to attract investors from Africa and other parts of the world. The fund managers and asset managers with property skill sets are able to drive excess returns.
“Essentially, we have good quality grade ‘A’ stocks, which are developed by local investors and international private equity firms as well, but we will have stabilised returns going forward in many areas that the markets in West Africa are targeting.”
Edu said generally, investment focus had been on the grade ‘A’ commercial office and retail sectors, adding that investors had yet to see the development of good quality grade ‘B’ or ‘B+’ investments targeted at the domestic occupier market and domestic institutional investors.
“We need to look towards rebalancing the economy and improving domestic manufacturing output. Together with infrastructure improvements, this will open up more sectors for investment, including logistics and warehousing,” he added.
