The trouble with building control enforcers in Nigeria (Encounter with ESWAMA Enugu team)

On a very good Monday while I was in a building site in Enugu supervising a decking carpentry work, I had stayed about an hour when I remembered that I hadn't eated any meaningful meal all day, and it was past 2pm, so I told my workers that I will be back shortly, I left my car in the site and walked about a hundred metres or more to a restaurant on the corner. 

I had just settled down to a meal when my phone rang, it was my carpenter who was sounding frantic, he told me that men of the ESWAMA task force in Enugu were in the site demanding for evidence of payment of debris disposal levy which every site is supposed to pay before construction can start, I asked the carpenter to check it on the wall where I normally leave it pasted. But, he told me that the rains of the previous night peeled the sheet away (as we had no covered place to keep the photocopy) so I asked him to wait for me as I was just around the corner eating. He gave the phone to the stern talking official who spoke to me, I assured the man of coming there in 2 minutes to give him the copy in my car, but he told me he will wait till I come. 

I raced back to the site, abandoning my food only to see that the carpenter has been bundled into their bus and they sped off. They usually trick people by asking you to speak to  a policeman inside the bus, the policeman will ask you to sit beside him and as soon as you settle on the seat, other officials will close you in and drive you to their office by force. Why couldn't they wait for me when they promised to.

So I called the carpenter, he told me they are speeding back to their office with him, so I started up and chased after them. Somehow, I got to their office before the team, and patiently waited for them in a hidden area to come in. When they reached the office, I quietly came out and asked what the problem is, they wanted to know who I was, and I told him I was in charge of the project. They told me it was me they were looking for, and that they will release the carpenter and detain me for failure to pay up. My mood immediately changed from anger to laughter. 

I dared them to go ahead and arrest me and release my carpenter, so they told my worker to go out while I should go into the cage. I waited patiently as my carpenter crossed the gate and went very far, pretending to be walking towards the cage. So they crossed out my carpenters name and asked what my name was so they can replace the name. Big mistake by them.

I quickly swung to their mode, went down to their level and unleashed the thug behaviour which they understand better, I was hurling words at them, asking them to dare touch me if they are not afraid, there was a large crowd of officials, police, and arrested people watching the drama. It quickly turned to a pushing match as they were telling me to enter the arrested peoples area, one of them pulled off his shirt and wanted to fight me! People were restraining him from attacking me. Those people can be very arrogant.

Many more people rushed out to know what was the problem, and then the officer that knows me came out and called out to me, I told him I had paid, and removed the receipt from my pocket, the receipt had his signature. The thugs were still claiming right, insisting that I let the carpenter get away, the drama continued but I knew there was no way they can do anything. In the end, one Oga called all of us into his office and mediated on the matter, the issue was settled and I left the place in only 15 minutes, without paying anything. The thugs later followed me to my car and wanted me to tip them with something, smiling and acting apologetic but I just drove off. Its tough out there. 

My experience with a stone chippings supplier at a building site.

Stone chippings madness.

And so I asked a supplier to bring a trip of chippings to my site, we agreed on a full truck of 10 tons average. The truck driver refused to give me his location or travel progress from the onset, only to reach the site and start calling me that he is ready to offload. I quickly told him to wait till I can get someone to verify the quantity and size of his load. In less than a minute, he has tipped his truck and is ready to leave, asking for his balance of about N20,000.

The driver called me and wanted to take his pay immediately, I told him that this wasn't the agreement I had with the supplier, and he went berserk, preventing workers from working and causing obstruction of work flow. On phone, I asked all workers to go about their work and allow him be. So the driver ordered his boys to start manually throwing the chippings back into his truck, and if he moves with this load, he says he will never refund the earlier N80,000 I paid as advance for the chippings.

At that point I asked workers in the site to prevent him from moving my chippings, see trouble, a fight quickly broke out and the community gathered, it took the intervention of the community youths leadership to settle the matter. The driver was blamed for offloading without confirmation and I was asked to reduce his balance by N5,000.

Lesson learned, always deal with those you can trust.

Feasibility study on the investment and profitability of 1 bedroom self contained apartments.

1. Need for mid sized accommodations 

Ladies and gentlemen, let's explore the property market. Properties for rent has proven to be a sure way of reaping rental income from the large population of renters in a developing country like Nigeria. We will be looking at the prospects for the building construction of a block of 12 flats of one bedroom each. This is the type of rental unit that have proven to make a lot of rental income for investors in the last few years. 

Over the course of the last 10 years, investors have found out that building bigger accommodation like 4 bedroom, 3 bedroom flats are sometimes counter productive as the first renter sometimes stay in the same house for life. Up to 50 years living in that same house, housing relatives, children, grand children and sometimes great grand children till they become so fixed in the environment that it will be almost impossible to move them from the house. They have been to numerous occasions and events for the landlords, and may have become as close as family, if they have not become inlaws sef. Lol. 

Investors are looking for shorter let apartments, because the turnover will be higher as more people will leave smaller apartments for bigger ones as their families grow bigger. Shorter let apartments also have more demand because people on the move, corpers, contractors and other people who wont like the high cost of hotels prepare to rent for a year, and may depart the area due to future assignments. 

2. Need to fit more rooms into a building 

Lands are costly, and there are payments for approval of a building you can only pay once, like building approval, local government rates, community youths fees and other payments. You will like to put as many flats in a house as possible. Some build as many as 30 flats in a compound, others 24 or higher, but I think 12 flats is the optimum number. You dont need to worry about parking spaces, those who rent these kinds of houses most times dont have cars, so there wont be problems with parking of cars. 

3. Cost of the building 

This is where it gets scary, because every item of importance in this country is highly expensive. Due to the policies of the government, there has been massive inflation in the cost of everything. Building materials costs are not left out of the rise. Every item of building materials, including the labour and workmanship has increased over 3 folds in the last 1 year alone. Transportation of men and materials is also high. 

After carefully calculating every cost associated with the land acquisition, payment of approval fees, fencing and gate, complete building construction and finish, till this house is ready for rent, the realistic total cost of building this size of house is about N160,000,000.00 (all costs inclusive) 

4. Profitability outlay

But just as the costs of building houses has been soaring, every other cost is also rising, including rental costs. It wont be strange to hear that this size of building can rent fo as high as N600,000 to N800,000 per flat for a new house. If the house is in the centre of the city, expect to collect much more than this amount. Even up to N1,200,000 in good locations. That's a P/E ratio of 17.77. (160,000,000.00 /9,000,000.00.

5. Conclusion 

I think this is a very good investment in light of the very poor PE ratio prevalent in many other investment options, and this is almost risk free. I have a unit of this kind of house, and I will want to get more as time goes on. The numbers may be crazy now, because of the acquisition costs, especially the construction costs, but be rest assured that the situation will improve with time, with good house management, you will hardly miss a month's rent. Rental costs are set to rise further, as houses in the fringes start to get more developed as the government provide more infrastructure like roads, culverts and electrification projects. 

We are ready to help you secure good land deals, empty lands range

from N10,000,000 to about N20,000,000 in better locations. The better the location, the likelihood of higher rental income. We can also help you build the house from start to finish, this is what we've been doing for the past 14 years here. We have a collection of more than 60 completed buildings done online.  Contact us today. 

Spyder880 

0803 335 0750 (Voice or WhatsApp)

Change of strategy in the services of Spyder880 builders

The change of strategy in the services of Spyder880 builders.

We are resreategizing!

Ladies and gentlemen, we welcome you to the month of October 2024, a month the management and workers in the Tigerkenn Homes Ltd, Spyder880 Building team, and all my affiliated businesses have decided to change the strategy of our service offerings.

First, we will like to thank you all for your patronage, for your dedication and followership over the last 13 years. We all have come a long way. You have been our strongest assets, for your support, your encouragement and your continued patronage, we say a BIG THANK YOU.

We have built a lot of houses together, over 60 houses and counting. Its not because we are perfect, but because you have continued to trust our development, and our continued attempts to make the building of houses a better experience for all, irrespective of whether you are present or not while we developed your houses.

Change, is a constant in life, and at periods like this, we will like to change the strategy of our service offering to our most important assets, YOU, our clients. We are doing this with the consciousness that we need to get better at what we do.

So, from now onwards, we are more dedicated in pleasing YOU, our clients and customers. We have opened a few shops and stores to stock building materials and accessories, and expanded our operations to include other aspects of buildings, like buying and selling of properties.

We will now be more focused on the prospects of enriching our clients with information about where lucrative building locations and properties are, and ensuring you get them at competitive prices. We can still help clients build their houses on contract as we always do, but most importantly, we will be having properties for sale. These will include new lands, houses, and even old houses that we consider a bargain at their prices.

We will be aiming to buy plots and houses, new or old, renovate or demolish them and then build new ones to offer to clients for direct purchase. We will also be advertising properties well vetted from other people affiliated to us. We will be in every part of Enugu, Igboland and Nigeria, checking for sweet deals and reporting them to you.

We have concluded plans to float a new website, we will soon unveil the site for all our clients, customers and friends to see and explore. We will still continue to offer our services in our old channels, but we aim to create newer ones. For all the services we offer before, we are still going to offer them, but the new focus will now be towards building and selling modern houses and properties at competitive prices.

We trust in your support, patronage and encouragement. We promise to get better at what we do, we are currently in talks with many other trusted professionals to enhance clients experience for the better.

Thank you all.

PERFECTION IS OUR GOAL, EXCELLENCE WILL BE TOLERATED.

 

How to make a local wooden door in Nigeria

When I say local wooden, I mean that the door is assembled here and not that all the materials used to make the door are locally made. These doors are mostly used internally. These doors serve as entrance to rooms, kitchens and stores. The process of making the doors involves coupling of wooden panels in the former of a door, then using gum to stick an imported door layer of any design to the already prepared door panels. This will give you results like the last two pictures. The advantage of this type of door is the smooth finish . The look is markedly different and requires no painting in the end. Cost of this door is in the region of N30-40 thousand naira depending on the type of door frame you choose. For more inquiry, call or chat 0803 335 0750 (voice and WhatsApp)

The cost of building a 6 bedroom, 2 lounges duplex (Duplex type 2)

DUPLEX TYPE 2 (2 Lounges, 6 Bedrooms) Ground floor 1 Entrance porch 1 Ante room 1 Gym room 1 Garage (one car) 1 Visitors W/C 1 Main lounge, voided at the top, + a gallery overlooking the lounge, with a nice bar  1 Dining room 2 En suite bedrooms with closets 1 Kitchen 1 Kitchen store 1 Pantry 1 Study room 1 Staircase 3 Passage Lobbies for easy flow of movement  Upper floor 1 Family private lounge 1 Master bedroom with walk in closet, large bathroom that can take a Jacuzzi, and a private and opened large balcony, excellent for taking a sun bath. 3 En suite bedrooms with closets 2 Lobbies, connecting the gallery Window ledges on every room windows around the house, great for flower vases.  COST. Construction cost for building this house from land cleaning, foundation till roofing with stone coated roofing tiles, and finish of this house with top range materials, screeding, all paintings and industrial cleanings till turn key level is estimated to be about N121.5m. A gate man house could be added as a bonus. CONDITIONS. There might be need for a cost review if the land requires additional work on the foundation, but this will depend on the extent of work needed. Each situation will be considered on a case by case basis, and the final cost agreed. There might also be situations that can bring about a reduction in the cost of building this house, but only after an on-site inspection. This costing does not include the fence or compound works as we don't have your size of land now. Call me on 0803 335 0750 so we talk more about starting a new house for you.

How wall plastering work could be evaluated

Wall plastering