Expert identifies impediments to housing delivery

Managing Director, Grenadines Homes, Mrs. NoimotOlatunji, has called on government at all levels to urgently put measures in place to fast-track timely and cost effective housing delivery in the country by simplifying the approval processes of land titles.
According to the Lagos-based real estate developer, the condition under which players and investors in the real estate sector operate currently is “unfriendly, cumbersome, anti-business and generally very ambiguous”,.
She listed the hard conditions to include bureaucratic red tape the processing of land titles and building approvals.
Speaking as a panel member during the session on ‘reducing red tape’ at the just concluded Real Estate Unite Conference 2014, in Lagos, Olatunji stated that although there was nothing wrong in setting rules and regulations, she bemoaned undue bureaucratic bottleneck encountered in the course of seeking approval as the bane of the Nigeria’s real estate sector.
“Rules and processes are in place for the protection of the real estate sector, but what we actually want is for somebody to give us timely updates on the approval process. We want to know if the title applications are being processed or if there are issues. We want to know if the designs meet the specifications; we want to know if everything is okay. What we don’t want is to go half way down the development journey only to find out that there are issues”, she said.
The Grenadines Homes boss further noted that the practice of non-delegation of authority and consequent needless long wait in the absence of some officials in charge of approvals was a setback in the running of government business.
“They will tell you the governor has sent the engineer somewhere so this week nothing is happening and these are the things that really do frustrate us. When we are being stalled by the government processes it becomes an integrity issue for us because we keep giving clients one excuse or the other because of the engineer who has personalised the office”, she lamented.
Mrs. Olatunji also drew a link between red tape and corruption while advocating that such behaviour was not good for any economy. She urged government and concerned stakeholders to address corruption in all facets of our national life.
According to her, “the solution to dealing with this thorny issue is to make the processes very clear from the outset. What the sector really needs are concise guidelines on what we have to do, how much it will cost and how long it will take. If we have that, then we are on a good starting point and will prevent unscrupulous people from defrauding the system.”
She further advocated the setting up of parameters for measurement which will allow for effective planning. “The industry will be better served when those responsible for processing applications are held up to a high standard where they can state periodically how many applications they receive, how many have been processed and how many are pending; and the time frame it will take or it has taken to process them. Then the sector can be taken seriously”, Olatunji enthused.