A real estate developer, Omotayo Odumade, has said that Lagos State has policies and regulatory bodies to put to check the shoddy work of developers in the construction of buildings in the state.
Odumade, who spoke, at the weekend, said the incessant collapse of buildings in Lagos in recent times would become a thing of the past if the regulatory bodies can do their jobs in line with the real estate policies of the state.
The estate developer, who is the Chief Executive Officer of a real estate outfit, believes that the real estate industry is huge and offers opportunities for participants in the sector to generate revenue.
Odumade, an alumnus of the prestigious Lagos Business School, where he studied Agriculture Business Management, took a swipe at real estate developers, who derive joy in cutting corners in the execution of their projects at the detriment of the sector and the citizenry.
“Cutting corners is an old-fashioned tactic in real estate. From experience, most of the corner cutters have blamed themselves in the long run. He said that it is time for managers of the real estate industry to embrace technology in their construction work,” he said.
He added: “Let me give you a practical example, we have properties that stay a year or more in the market before they are sold. For a developer that has cut corners in painting for example, he will have to repaint and repaint before he gets his property sold out, which means he must have spent three times of the initial painting cost as a result of the delay in selling off his property.
“Another example is houses that have cracks, the Lekki-Ajah axis for example, it’s a water-filled land that mostly requires pile foundations, and some developers cut corners and will do just raft foundations and neglect the piling just because they want to be cost-effective “In the long run, their houses crack and they have to sometimes demolish or spend extra cost to repair what should have been done properly. So, corner cutting most times is also a disadvantage to developers that do such.”
