An Abuja-based estate developer, Arch. Anthony Obekpa, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Divine Shekina Glory Properties Limited, a.k.a Shekina Estate, has offered affordable payment plans for subscribers or intending house owners in Abuja.
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Obekpa who spoke with TheCEO, on Friday disclosed that he was driven by the passion to alleviate the suffering and pains of some civil servants and other Nigerian populace, especially the low-income earners, to get a modern house of their own in the Federal Capital Territory 9FCT), Abuja and its environs.
He said the passion birthed Divine Shekina Glory Properties with interest in estate development in the year 2009. He said the company was registered as a subsidiary of his construction and architectural firm – Mega-Tone Global Ltd and commenced the real estate business in 2010.
Arch. Obekpa said that in his estate, he decided to offer the best payment plan for intending house owners because he felt their pains and struggle to provide comfortable homes for their loved ones. He shared how he started, the challenges faced and available land and payment plans.
“When we started in 2010, we have a lot of subscribers that were interested and we saw that the interest mostly was because of the flexible payment plan. Subscribers were even the ones marketing the land for us because of the flexibility of the payment plan. When more people started coming in, some of them started asking us if they could get the property under us in FCT instead of Nasarawa. We were then encouraged and we leverage the request to get some hectares of land in Lugbe, FCT in 2011. There we started our marketing with Civil Defence Staff and they became our major marketers.
Chairman/CEO, Divine Shekina Glory Estate, Arch Tony Obekpa
“When we started construction in 2012, we ran into a problem with Federal Capital Development Authorities (FCDA) under Bala Mohammed-led administration as FCT minister. There were incidences of some estate developers not having land but they were collecting money from people or some have the land but the land titles were not well regularised and there were double and even triple allocations so the FCDA went about demolishing houses in the Lugbe axis of the FCT. As a result, we were all asked to submit our papers to the Police Authorities for investigations and, to the glory of God, almost 90 per cent of our papers were cleared and we were bold to continue with the development of the facility. Today, Shekina Glory Estate in Lugbe is on over 30 hectares of land and in four phases (Phase 1; Phase 2; Phase 3 and Phase 4).
“Another of our challenges is funding. Funds are coming slowly in trickles but we don’t want to go and hang ourselves with any bank or any financial institutions to put our subscribers and ourselves in trouble. So, we are mostly relying on the trickling in of the ‘infrastructure fees’ that subscribers pay and soft loan from lenders when some projects need to be done when funds are not on ground and pay back after we recoup from subscribers to keep the estate going and to keep it attractive to our subscribers.
“We have three major categories of land on sale in both Lugbe and Kurudu and we still have land there available. We have land for 4bedroom duplexes, 4bedroom and 3bedroom bungalows. The land for the 4bedrooms is on 810sm2 and currently goes for N7.5milion and the ‘infrastructure fee’ is N3.5million in Lugbe.
“We also have different categories of land in the Kurudu Estate. We also have the 4bedroom duplex or bungalows on 810sm2 of land there but the price is different. Kurudu’s own goes for N3million against N7.5m while the infrastructure fee is N1.5m against N3.5m in Lugbe.
“Then we have 405sm2 for 3bedroom bungalow for N4milion for the land and N2.5m for the infrastructure fee in Lugbe while in Kurudu, the same size of land and structure goes for N1.5milion for the 3bedroom bungalow and N900,000.00 (N900k) for infrastructure fee with the same payment design. We are trying the best we can to provide the infrastructure too.
“The payment plan for the land and the infrastructure fee, as said earlier, is not more than three instalments and subscribers can commence building after paying for, at least, 50% of the infrastructure fee.
“For flexibility, we break it down into three stages of instalments. At first, subscribers make an initial payment of 50% before commencement of building, 30% payment before roofing and finally, the remaining balance of 20% should be paid before packing into the building. That is a flexible arrangement for subscribers.
“Within these stages of instalments, we still give consideration to those paying monthly from their salaries. But the policy is that you cannot proceed at any stage of work until the next required payment is made. This is because some subscribers have thought us lessons in Lugbe. We allowed them to continue until they packed into their buildings but when we asked for the balance payment of their infrastructure fee, it became a big problem. We had to take some of them to court before we recover the money. Since then, we don’t want to repeat such a mistake again.
“The payment for the infrastructure fee is one-off. We broke them down into three instalments as mentioned above because our package is meant for civil servants. To tell a civil servant after paying N1.5m to go and bring another N900k immediately for infrastructure fee before commencement of building will be very difficult for them.
“The infrastructure fee is a one-off payment. As you complete your payments and structure and pack in, there will be no other ‘infrastructure fee’ except other fees like for management of the estate, waste management, light, security, etc, as applicable to other estates management.”
