When real estate industry experts, professionals and sundry stakeholders gather in Lagos in the next few days for the fifth edition of the Real Estate Unite (REU) conference, participants will get insights on investment options and how to invest in real estate in an economy that is undergoing recession.
Akinwunmi Ambode, governor of Lagos State, and Babatunde Fashola, former governor of the state and the current minister of Power, Works and Housing, will be leading discussion in the annual conference organised by 3Invest Limited—a real estate advisory and consultancy firm.
Promoters of the conference say it has become real estate industry’s annual flagship summit that provides an important platform for global real estate leaders to discuss opportunities and issues in Africa’s real estate market.
This year’s edition which is focusing on ‘looking inwards, has as theme ‘Filling the G.A.P.S’ which is an acronym for ‘Government-Access-Private Sector-Strategy where Government stands for enhancing government performance through effective leadership, education, and technology; Access is enabling access through regulatory reforms; Private Sector has to do with real estate market in a recessive economy, local solutions to finding cheaper money, while Strategy is for rethinking local strategies for financing real estate in a recessive economy.
As the recession in the country continues to rattle not only the government with drying revenue but also households with hunger and unpaid bills, economic analysts are pointing fingers to ways out of the problem different from government’s insistence on selling its assets.
In consonance with the focus of the REU 2016 conference, Tunde Obileye, a facilities management expert and CEO, Great Heights Limited, feels that this is time for the country to look inwards and also re-examine itself with a view to discovering where it got it wrong.
“This is time for us to go back to the drawing board; the citizens have to be a lot more patriotic and need to think more about the country than themselves”,he said, adding that this time also has its advantage of instilling discipline in people who have become, increasingly, prudent in their spending.
