Harmony Gardens Boss Charges Estate Developers on Infrastructure, Costing

Managing Director, Harmony Gardens and Estate Development Limited, Hon. Dr. Saheed Mosadoluwa Audulahi, has implored real estate firms on the need for social amenities to support healthy living while planning their estates.

Likening a “residential estate without basic amenities to support healthy and safe living” to a Slum, Audulahi urged “estate developers to make adequate arrangement for the provision of critical estate infrastructure”.

Audulahi, who expressed concern that estate developers “under-estimate the cost of providing the requisite infrastructure within the estate and before long, they battle with capital inadequacy and loads and loads of complaints from clients/occupiers”, decried that “poor cost planning for infrastructure can make a mess of such a great venture”.

Stressing that infrastructure like “perimeter fencing, good road networks, drainage/sewer, CCTV/Security furniture, water works, electrification, recreational centre, landscaping and beautification, among others are vital, the Harmony Gardens Boss declared that cost of infrastructure could be half or even more “depending on the nature of the site and the occupier capacity”

Audulahi noted that “if the cost assigned to infrastructure at the planning stage is not adequate, the “developer may be heading for some horrible shocks as the project progresses”.

He noted that development on some estates were on hold “because the developer has sold out almost all the plots or housing units without ensuring adequate budgetary provisions for infrastructure and they are now at a dead end – no more properties within the estate to sell and raising money to complete the infrastructure works becomes extremely difficult”.

The real estate scribe also noted that “it is important, for estate developers, who sell serviced plots only, to correctly incorporate the cost of infrastructure without incurring any avoidable financial loss.

In his statistics, “cost of basic estate infrastructural development per acre of land hovers around 20-25 Million Naira and 45-55 Million Naira for affordable and luxury housing estates respectively, while “perimeter fencing, roads, drainages and electrification often amount to at least two-third of the total infrastructure budget.

“As at September 2015, a thorough cost analysis of a proposed 1500-unit affordable housing estate to be built on 200 acres of land in Abuja shows a gross estate infrastructure cost of 4.63 Billion Naira while the combined cost of the housing units (comprising of bungalows, duplexes and blocks of flats) was pegged at 10.74 Billion Naira; amounting to 43.11% in excess of the estimated cost for the design and construction of the actual housing units, noted Harmony Gardens Boss.

Audullahi insisted that the “costs, some of which are often difficult to deduce at planning stages, are relatively significant and should be taken seriously” because “many private and public estates with beautiful cartography are now a shadow of themselves”.