The Managing Director of Abdul Metro Group [ https://www.abdulmetrogroup.com ] , one of the most talk-about and reliable real estate firms located along Lekki-Ajah, Lagos, Nigeria, Dr. Adekunle Abdul, has disclosed that the vast success gained in the last years by the company can be fully attributed to the trust the investors and clients have in the company.
Below are excerpts from Dr. Adekunle’s statement:
On Metro And Castle Strides
We are majorly a community development company. We build communities. We do everything that a community needs to function effectively. From sports outlets, to retail outlets, to residential construction, to facilities management. Whatever you can think of that a community needs to survive, we do. So, like I said, our message has been very consistent over the years. The first five years of 300 housing units, have been the slogan for all these years. But at that time, we delivered 240 units because of COVID. We had a delay during COVID in 2020. We had some shortfalls. So, out of 300, we were able to deliver 240 between 2019 to 2024, and from this year 2025 to 2030, our next five-year projection, we are anticipating delivery of 500 housing units, across our Community.
We have started already. 10% of the new housing projection has been delivered, as I speak, we are moving on. So, we have about 450 housing units to go. We’ve expanded our scope out of this current community to others not far from here. We also do retail, which is large supermarket outlets for the community to benefit from. In our current community, we’ve established three of those retail outlets, one warehouse and a bakery.
We believe that is more than enough to serve the community that we have now. Which is the reason why we are expanding our community now. We are moving out of this environment to start developing more areas. We are about to start the sports center for the community next month. The land is just behind us here. We have about 8,000 square meters of land. We are about to start the community. We are going to have a football pitch and a basketball pitch. We are also going to have lawn tennis, and real tracks.
We are going to have a small recreational area. There are few things in addition. This is also to serve the community that we built in. We had one recreational centre before, but it was too small. It was just a football pitch. We called it a midsize arena. But we put it down after two years because we couldn’t continue. That’s why, from 1,200 square meters, we are now moving to 8,000 square meters of capacity. Like I said, we are about to start that next month. It’s a dream we are actualizing. Right beside us, there is another person who is building a hospital, which contributes to the community as well. We have pharmacies and we have other stuff. So, we are getting to our goal of a completed community cycle that we have always wanted. And this is our sixth year here.
So, we are really high on that. And thank God, I think we have a very great facility management team on ground. We’ve grown from a staff of eight to 148. Our facility team is doing a great job of maintaining all the rental estates within this community. So, if you go to the pool, gym, everything is working. So, it’s really not rocket science. It’s just paying attention to detail that matters.
Training Real Estate Practitioners
Speaking about realtors generally now, there has been a lot of problems in the country regarding real estates and professionalism. So many people do not follow rules or regulations. So, what we have noticed, and this is just part of our own ways of developing the human capacity in the industry, we want to assist.
The industry has been a place anybody can look around and call himself any name. What you know that you don’t have the basic knowledge about, but you parade yourself as one. I have friends who say, oh, my cousin is a realtor. What qualifies your cousin to be a realtor? And this is why you end up in a land that is an agriculture land. When you look at all the social media accounts, we figure out that the problem are the agents and the realtors too are not well equipped knowledge-wise.
You can’t just call yourself a realtor, you must do exams. You must have the right amount of knowledge. Because if you have it, it’s almost impossible to take someone’s land or buy an illegitimate property. Because as a realtor you must have done some level of due diligence.
But here, I think the realtor are not really focused on their commission and the money they are going to make but professionalism. Until this is done, and I think the penalty should be that you have your license seized. Then you can do your exams and get your license. If you are found to do any kind of illegal business, your license will be revoked. That way, people can sit right and ensure that if they want to stay in a business, they get it right before introducing people to invest their money. So, for those trainings, we are putting efforts together based on our raw knowledge of the streets and bringing in intellectual property personnel. For instance, when LABSCA marks a building, all the markings have different meanings, which many of these realtors do not know.
As a realtor, if you sight a marked building you should know the meaning. Most of them don’t know the meaning of those applications and legal stakes.
The agencies that cover building and development in Lagos State are more than 15 if I remember well. So, all the information will be disclosed during the training. We hope to have these realtors come in batches, give them tests and equipment.
At Metro and Castle [ https://www.metroandcastle.com ] want to use the training to contribute our quota to the industry to reduce the amount of scams. We’re also trying to see if we can help the government on this proposal, so that the training center would be able to do exams and have certificates issued for realtors.
Before you buy a property from a realtor, ask the person if he or she is certified so that your transaction will be professionally driven. So that the fraudulent activities and corruption in our industry will be slowed down. The centre is a 150 capacity hall, hopefully we will start later this month or next month.
Also, we’re not setting it up for profit, rather as our own contribution to the society. But because we will be running on generator to power the electricity, we may need to charge a little but we haven’t determined that yet. It’s actually some kind of a give-back to the society.
Despite Economic Challenges Real Estate Still Booming
Real estate is now the third sector. According to data, it’s the third after trade and agriculture, over oil and gas. Whether you like it or not, housing deficit is still huge. Real estate will always be in business. Also, I think the government is really focusing on these areas. This government have been very creative, though we are not there yet but it’s been very promising. The Ministry of Finance’s investment in the real estate has brought some hope. The government is creating solutions now, we hope it is well implemented. The government is opening the single digits, 9.7% solution, where people can access up to 100 million naira and buy properties.
We are committed community developers, and we also intend to build on that. So, we are engaging them, obviously, to see how we can partner with them and achieve a national output, if we access the loan.
Building Trust
Part of it is financing. If you don’t have a good proposal for me to repay loan, it makes the development of real estate very slow. Land issues also affect many developers, particularly those that do not do their due diligence.
For us, I think, the most important thing is to put every transaction under the law. That’s very important to us. All the lands that people built on belong to some families or settlers. Government takes some and leave the rest for the family. But for me, as direct builders, we buy lands with titles. That is why you do not see Metro and Castle [ https://www.metroandcastle.com ] in money or land issues. We go with land with valid titles only. That is our own brand, we try to shy away from these kinds of issues. And unfortunately, our field is so sensitive, that is why people have court cases. Somebody I know not too long ago still have issues on the 1.5 billion land he bought. You must differentiate between government land and family land.
As I speak, over two years now, the case is still ongoing.
These are the issues that we face on a daily basis that cause chaos for some practitioners. What I would advise people who want to survive in the real estate business is to avoid those kinds of properties at any stage of their career. It’s the easiest way to go.
So, try as much as possible to do your due diligence, dig deep, like I always say in my training, there’s difference between search and real search. If you want to search a property and you pay $10,000 or $50,000, but when you pay a lawyer $500,000, he’s going to dig deeper and bring out the original title. That would enable you to crosscheck facts to know the real truth on the property. A lawyer who doesn’t have that information may never achieve up to that extent. That’s the difference. So, I think for us, due diligence is very important.
There’s the government master plan, which are some of the problems that you see when people build on drainage areas. Those are actually the faults of the Lagos developers. There’s something along the line that is not discovered in the planning, because if you’re charting land, and it’s on that legacy, it will show you that it’s a drainage. When you go there, it looks like bush. It looks like land. But the day you go for approval, they will tell you you cannot build on the land. Those buildings that are built on drainage don’t have government approval. I can guarantee you that. If they did, they will find out that the place is on a government drain or on a government road, or something with government’s interest. So, the government’s interest is overriding. They have an overriding interest. It means that compulsory acquisition can be carried out by the government. That is why it’s good to have your title. Only if you own the land, and you have a title, when they move you out, they must pay you compensation.
Mapping Out of 176 Estates by Lagos State
Firstly, Metro and Castle [ https://www.metroandcastle.com ] is not among. However, people are mistaken what Lagos State released to mean that the estates are bad. They are not bad. What the government is saying is that it acknowledges that they have sold this land to these people. However, they want to know how the land were mapped out internally, because you need a town planner to come in and plan the structure. Government is saying we are not going to leave the planning of our estates to individuals. The government is not going to trust anybody to assume that they know what they are doing. It’s an assumption. So, there are people called town planners. They are the ones that plan it for you, put petrol station, police station, and all other things that should be inside estates. Even a percentage of that land goes for recreation.
You can’t just build residential on everything. So, I’m not sure of the numbers, but I think from around 10,000 square meters would require layout approval which town planners will approve.
How will the drainage system in very large estates of 2,000 blocks looks like If there’s no town planning, how do you link your drainage to the state’s waterways? If the government doesn’t plan, the government will be embarrassed with serious flooding. The water must be channeled to the river. But what these developers do is, when they acquire these lands, most of them start selling without getting approval. Or they may have submitted their approval and not gotten any feedback, and they’re just out rushing to recover their money by starting to sell.
When you think of the cycle truly, developers borrow money, interest is accruing. However, it’s not a reason to break the law. It doesn’t mean that the estates are bad or the land is bad. It’s like government just say, come and get your layout approved.
Why Metro And Castle Is Evolving
So the truth is, we are particular about our brand here, our target market is mixed. So we have a lot of diasporans, international investors, and a lot of Nigerian investors. We understand that majority of the masses are probably of lower-class because of the economy. The patronage has been good. I want to believe it is due to out professionalism in handling our construction as well as the relationship we have with our investors.
We at Abdul Metro Group ( https://www.abdulmetrogroup.com ) have decided that brand reputation should be one of our top priorities. That’s why, since we started, we have never been to court to settle disputes. We’ve sold hundreds of properties. We’ve never been sued. And the reason is because we know almost everything that it takes. It’s not out of place for somebody to complain about any key issue, but we handle it well and they will be satisfied. If you are a developer and you promise to deliver and clients don’t get the delivery, the trust will be broken. Trust is very important.
We never give our facility management to any company. Different companies have written proposals to help us manage. We didn’t give it up because the experience people start having if things start going bad, our brand would be getting the backlashes. We try to protect the integrity of our brand. I think the trend is that people collect money from investors and people don’t get their houses on time. Every year, we have a certain amount of houses that we must deliver. Our strategy is once we roof, we start selling and once you start paying, we just start finishing it for you. So for us, all the realtors are very friendly with us because they know that if you buy a metro, you get your house.
And like I said, the initiatives by this current administration has been really encouraging having to assist developers with funding. That had initially been one of our biggest problems. Going to banks and getting money at very high interest rates, which in turn makes the houses very expensive. Though they’re not expensive in real sense.
Now they are coming at us and saying, come, if you have done well and you have a concept that we can identify with or research, we can give you single digits. That is a major cost to the mechanism for us. Which in turn impacts the buyer to reduce cost of the housing market. Also, I think that concept helps with job creation. When there’s money to build, it requires a lot of labour. So as I am, I have the capacity to do more than what I’m doing. But the funding is a trigger for us.
Directly we employed over 148 staff with over 300 contractual staff. So, imagine, with all these guys benefitting along with their families, if we have more funding, how it will transform families. Also think about the factories that are producing. So for Metro now, a lot of things we use are made in Nigeria.
Only electronics that we import, like ovens and gas. Talk about the taps, doors, are made here. Everything we use are made here. So we try to patronize our local items. Once we know that your brand is very good we go for it. Because we know that once we patronize you, your spouse, employees will benefit as well as family. So the train goes round. Everybody starts becoming employed gradually. What I’m saying is that the idea behind plans by the government to make funding available via single digits is fantastic. I can see through that idea, executing the idea is another problem. So the efficiency of how it will be executed is what we are looking at.
Tips To Watchout For In Acquiring Land/property
So like I mentioned before, legal backing is very important to acquire a landed property as a developer. If you build on a troubled land, government land or drain, you will blame yourself for not doing due diligence. Because you may eventually lose the land and building, the money is also gone. So I think you should take lawyers more seriously.
When you are going to negotiate a property in millions, and there’s no lawyer there, you have exposed yourself to all kinds of issues. There are too many avenues they can hit you from. Once your lawyer tells you it’s not for residential you should avoid it. The government may have allocated that land for something else.
Building For Low Income Earners
Land is the driving factor. If the government provides cheaper lands, properties will be cheaper as well. What we construct here in Ajah is the same they do at Lekki but just that the land there that costs 400 million, costs only 100 million here. I hope you understand the difference. The prices are different despite that we use same block and cement. So, for affordable housing, if the government can give us more lands at cheaper rates, it will reduce the cost for low income earners, because we have a good structure of payment for people who are of low income already.
The new initiative of the government is what we hope will be accessible to us and buyers as well. It is for the developers and the buyers. It’s for both, the cycle is complete. Achieving this dream is tough but we are undaunted. Our dream is to have Metros in every state and as a key business leader in the real estate industry. We indeed have a good team to achieve this and I, as a person, hope to be counted as one of the persons that solve the housing problems in this country. I want to integrate real estate business and correct the anomalies that have been bedeviling the industry.
