How to Become a Real Estate Developer in Nigeria

In one of our recent articles on business ideas, we have explained how you can make money from real estate in Nigeria. In that article, we mentioned that becoming a real estate developer or land property developer is one of the best ways you can make money from the real estate business in Nigeria.

So today, I will be explaining in detail how you can become a land property developer or real estate developer in Nigeria. I will be giving you the step-by-step guide you need to take so you can get it right from the start without mistakes.

Who is a Real Estate Developer? 

A real estate developer is a person who builds a house or estate for an individual or group of persons. These houses could be for residential use or official use. A real estate developer is good at what he or she does because he or she has a background in civil engineering through formal or informal means.

Real estate developers do not work alone. They need the help of surveyors, architects, carpenters, and bricklayers to be able to build houses properly. However, they oversee the structure deciding what should be added or what should be ignored.

How to Become a Real Estate Developer in Nigeria 

Here are the steps on how to become a real estate developer in Nigeria today.

1. Learn the Skill

No matter what you have learned in a technical school or the university you still need to learn how to become a real estate developer – what I call the hands-on skill. You need to learn what it takes. What real estate developers usually do when they go to sites, how they manage their workers, and how they make money.

You need to learn to understand how houses are built from foundation to roofing. And all this cannot be understood easily as an outsider but as an insider. As a real estate developer in Nigeria, you need to understand building rules. For example, making sure the borehole of a building is far from its septic tank. 

All this you need to learn before you can even call yourself a real estate developer in Nigeria. As for how long it takes to learn this skill, it usually takes one-two years.

2. Register your Business Name

It is impossible to become a professional real estate developer in Nigeria without registering your business as a company under the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and registering yourself under the Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN).

These two most important registrations make you a professional in what you do. It also makes you be recognized by the government as a professional real estate developer. You can win any contract from both the government and private entities if you have two registrations.

If you do not have the registration, you will be considered a quack and can be arrested especially when one of the buildings you build collapses. You should read our article on how to register your business name in Nigeria for a step-by-step guide on this.

3. Build a Professional Team

As I said explained earlier, real estate developers in Nigeria do not work alone. They need other workers in the real estate sector to make their job complete. This is why you need to build your own professional team if you want to be successful as a developer.

The workers you need in your team are:

1. Bricklayer

2. Carpenters

3. Surveyor

4. Architect

5. Welder

6. Aluminum

7. Plumber

8. Electrician

9. Scaffolder 

and more.

All these workers should be selectively chosen based on their professionalism and experience. And when you are employing them you should agree on their wages to avoid misunderstanding in the future.

4. Connect with Other Developers

Connecting with other real estate developers in Nigeria is very important if you really want to survive as a real estate developer. This is because no business can survive alone. You need your fellow real estate developers in Nigeria for advice and to get clients that want to build their houses.

There are so many challenges you will face. These challenges can be very overwhelming especially if you do know to have someone as knowledgeable as you to share them with. There are different ways you can meet other real estate developers in the industry.

You can meet them by attending regular meetings of real estate developers in your local area and by meeting them at their sites when they are at work.

5. Getting your First Clients

Getting your first set of clients is the hardest part when it comes to being a real estate developer in Nigeria and this is because many developers put their hopes high – thinking their first job has to be a million naira contract. As a real estate developer who wants to succeed on time, you have to be willing to take any job to build your client/customer list gradually.

Contacts like renovating a house, repairing suck away, repairing a fence, or repairing of house roof are easy to get and will help you make money easily. You can hunt for these types of contracts before house-building or estate-building contracts. You should start from low-risk jobs to high-risk jobs.

6. Start Building and Buying Lands and Houses

Building houses to your customer’s taste is very important if you really want to become famous easily as a real estate developer in Nigeria. Apart from this, do not compromise your standards when it comes to building materials as this will come back to hunt you in the nearest future.

Always build houses that are strong and beautiful. When there is satisfaction, this will make your customers refer you to their family and friends that also want to build their own houses. All this advice might not earn you millions of naira in the short run but it will take you far faster.

7. Making Money as a Real Estate Developer 

There are different ways you can make money (profits) as a real estate developer in Nigeria. I have mentioned some of the above but for clarity; I will list them one more time here.

1. You can make money by renovating houses. More renovations are done daily on houses to make them last longer. You can make money renovating houses for house landlords.

2. You can make money by counseling or advising house owners or landlords. So many property owners are confused in terms of which kind of houses they should build, the layout, or the design. You can make profits by advising them how to go about it.

3. You can also make money from the sales of building materials. You do not need to sell building materials as a real estate developer in Nigeria before you can make money from it. You can make money by simply buying these building materials and delivering them to the site of your contractors.

There are many more ways you can make money as a real estate developer in Nigeria. However, these are the most popular ways.

Conclusion 

It is time for real estate entrepreneurs in Nigeria to start seeing that becoming a real estate developer is one of the fastest ways to make millions. And the more they get familiar with the business, the more they will make money directly and indirectly from the industry.

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