The year has been visited with high inflation, insecurity – which has led to a highly uncertain business environment in addition to the aftermath of lockdown due to the pandemic. The Nigerian currency, the naira has been on a free fall with no hope of any sustainable appreciation soon. As a result of this, a lot of people have been scampering for investment options that protect the value of the naira, grow their money and hedge against inflation.
Dutiful and wise investors like yourself always seek opportunities that protect and grow their wealth.
An option to minimize the effect of the depreciating naira is to convert the naira into currencies or investment options that are immuned against uncontrolled depreciation and instability.
Real estate is recognised as one of the asset classes that hedges against inflation, prevent depreciation of cash value, and also grow your cash if done well. It creates the needed stability and is also readily available.
Although not all real estate investment opportunities can hedge inflation, protect the value of money or grow your cash. This is why you must carefully consider these two critical factors, amongst other factors before you buy or invest in an off-plan property.
Now let’s take a look at these two important factors that aid the protection of currency value and grow your money in real estate when you want to buy an off-plan property.
1. The property or project location: For your investment in real estate not to be reduced to liability, you should not invest in just any type of property in any location. You must be able to look beyond the hype and the noise about a location. Cheap or expensive does not also mean profitability. A profitable investment that protects the value of your money and grows it is what you are looking to achieve. Therefore a property in a location that delivers that should be the focus.
Only careful consideration, analysis and logical justification can show the profitability of an investment in real estate in a certain location whose goal is to increase the value of or prevent cash depreciation. Falling in love with a location or property type at this stage takes the last burner if you must entertain any burner for emotions at all.
2. The property developer selection: When looking to invest in real estate for specific reasons such as protecting cash value, not all vendors, developers or sellers you should buy from. Developing homes in cities are in no measure a small feat. It is a whole gamut especially in cities where real estate contributes majorly to the personal and collective economy of the city.
Creating homes especially where land is scarce, real estate developers have to secure unencumbered land, design a functional concept, get necessary approvals, secure initial funding and find buyers or off-takers. As simple as this process sounds, it is not a walk in the park. It requires courage and tenacity to stay true and deliver on promises.
Interestingly, a developer’s product can be just the perfect fit because it is most times a product created to make a profit for the developer and off-takers especially the early off-takers. Again, multiple units are developed per time in strategic locations with various cost-reduction approaches. Although, not all products by your favourite developers fit an investment purpose.
Therefore, you do not want to jump at any off-plan property opportunity in any location and with just any stakeholder. You also want some level of certainty that your investment in real estate will yield the desired result.
Now the question is how would you know some of the few developers with a win-win offer, who delivers functional buildings and gives a guarantee? How do you find the developer that is worth doing business with?
A simple way to ensure the right selection of location and stakeholders is to get your skin in the game. This you can do by improving your real estate investing knowledge. Get close to project sites, get to know as many stakeholders that are involved in identified projects. To learn about how to identify stakeholders and some salient questions to ask, send an email to info@futureperfectproperties.com. Your knowledge about real estate investing and a clear goal for the investment equips you to know how best to engage stakeholders as well as questions to ask. You would also be able to know satisfactory and logical answers when you get them.
About the author
Oluwakemi Adeyemo is a highly sought Real Estate Investment Advisor and Coach. The expert who help investors to make more money in real estate. She believes that real estate is designed to sustain human existence and is the bedrock of wealth creation. Her job is to get to know your investment goals and provide you with expert yet relevant analyses on real estate investment options.
She has helped investors save more than ₦450,000,000 that would have been lost in real estate. She has also assisted to source vantage properties for businesses and individuals within record time. Closed transactions well over ₦1,200,000,000.00 and counting.
She researches a lot and scrutinizes real estate investments so you don’t have to. She helps institutional investors analyze investments and optimize profit in real estate. Her skill and expertise help individual investors understand better the concept of real estate, prevent regrettable mistakes and boost investor confidence. She is also an Author and Column contributor in Businessday Newspaper, BellaNaija and Nairametrics.
