‘Absence of national property databank impeding investment’

The lack of market information with which to benchmark valuations or support investment decisions is affecting prospective investors from committing funds to the real estate sector.

The severity of situation has continued to remain a black box within the industry.

While some firms have established own proprietary data and others have started to publish useful market research, which experts say, could not be reliable.

For instance, the sector ended 2017 with a -5.92per cent contribution to the country’s GDP; a significant drop from the -3.1per cent recorded in the first quarter of last year.
   
Expectedly, the absence of data in the market has negatively impacted transparency in transaction, which has been extremely poor, and significantly constraint growth and investment.

The valuers own databases, which remain the most reliable sources of information, are also not made public in some cases where they are available.
 
The Guardian’s investigation shows that it takes a lot of efforts to gather necessary information which could guide in making investment decisions by would-be investors but in the absence of property databank, meaningful development would be lost.
 
Speaking on the development, President, Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV), Mr. Rowland Abonta confirmed to The Guardian, that lack of property databank is a major challenge in real estate.

However, he said the industry is not alone in the situation as almost every sector of the nation, lack retrievable data.

According to him, in the area of professional practice, it’s more labourious and expensive to be able to come up with proper report and analysis of situations due to lack of data.
   
According to him, the failure of having data, affects everything that happens within the country as most of the actions are on ad-hoc basis, no reference to the past nor proper projection for the future which keeps the nations as undeveloped.
   
He stressed the need for openness, especially changing the situation whereby people do transactions in secrecy because of ‘corrupt tendency’, as they wouldn’t want to make it known to the public and so becomes a major hindrance to data collection.

Abonta said as a professional body, NIESV, has since the year 2013, been publishing real estate data on the institution’s databank magazine adding that recently another survey has been completed and awaiting publishing by end of the year.
  
Regrettably, he stated that the effort by the association amounts to a drop in an ocean as a lot of people are not cooperating as the on-going thing is more of secrecy in transactions, which are not captured in a layout of whatever has taken place.

If the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the National Population Commission are effective, we won’t have challenges.

“A country that can’t capture the number of new birth won’t be able to capture the number of death. What we have relied on is what the United Nations, based on their western experience host on us as our housing deficit. We don’t have original data bank for what is happening in our nation and it is a bad situation”.
     
As a way forward, he declared that government must be committed to mapping up data for the country while organizations that have been given mandate to store data, should be held accountable, adequately funded and members of professional bodies should be open to release information for building up of data which could be used for effective planning for the nation.
   
President, Nigerian Institute of Building (NIOB), Mr. Kenneth Nduka, said lack of data/information on the sector has lead to investment flight as investors wouldn’t invest where they won’t recoup their funds.
   
Accordingly, he stated that issues that has to do with land data registry isn’t the responsibility of the association as it’s ought to be handled by the ministry of lands in conjunction with the surveyor general of the respective states.

The agency, he said also take the database of governments’ master plan design for a particular location for would-be estate developers to clear from the agency before citing their estate.
   
According to him, when investors don’t have information on the risks/return in their investment as a result of absence of databank and they would have to be careful in their investment decisions.

“In construction sector, there are no data because people are unwilling to neither give nor keep data. Lack of data is the cause of indiscriminate development in the country; people just develop anyhow without considering the demands of residents/nature of development required in a location”.

He said there is a need for data on property development in all area of the country to guide investors in their business plan.

“People, who are involved in letting of properties, have data and won’t want to release it because it is useful for them, nobody takes the responsibility on the need to gather data but the government is supposed to drive record keeping because it’s not the responsibility of the private sector. If the government takes up the responsibility of setting up an agency for that purpose, that would resolve the problem”, he stated.