IMPORTANT NOTICE

Babatunde Shonekan is the Managing Director of Dorchester Property, a real estate firm based on the Island. In this special interview with Olayinka Elebute, he talks about his first property deal in Lagos.

First property deal
Estate agency is what I love doing in addition to my Law practice. My first property deal was in 1991. It was a storey building known as Murphis House at Sanusi Fafunwa Street in Victoria Island. The size of the house was 600sqm, which is 300sqm up and down. The property was renting for N1.5 million per annum in 1991. The landlord had insisted on N2million for the rent but after much persuasion he agreed and asked my client to pay for five years rent. The landlord actually spread the rent over a period of five years and my client was asked to pay N1.5million quarterly. My own commission was actually five percent of the rent. It was the commission that I used to rent my first office in Victoria Island. At the moment, Murphis House will rent for nothing less than N18million per annum.

Sanusi Fafunwa in 1991
Victoria Island and Ikoyi in those days was pretty much a residential location. The only area that had any form of commercial activity was Awolowo Road in Ikoyi. In Victoria Island, you could count the number of buildings used as offices. I remember one of the first very visible offices was Equitorial Trust Bank at Adeola Odeku.  Eko Court, Law School, 1004 Estate and Driving Schools were the commercial activities in Victoria Island. At that time, the main working area was Lagos Island. Electricity was better then because there were fewer offices like we have now. Roads in Sanusi Fafunwa and other parts of Victoria Island were always passable. Water supply was not constant at that time and people living in Victoria Island had to buy water.

Sanusi Fafunwa at the moment
At the moment, Sanusi Fafunwa and Victoria Island as a whole is now a commercial location. That is good, because every big city needs a high brow area where you have offices and commercial activity. There were moves made before by the Lagos State Government to hamper the development of businesses in Victoria Island. I think it does not make sense because as far as I am concerned, the whole of V.I should be commercialised. There are no businesses that should be hampered in this axis. People want to do business in a place where they feel the money is.  At the moment, V.I is a mixed use neighbourhood. If you go to the City of London, Central London and New York, you find offices, businesses and residential accommodation side by side. In terms of infrastructure, bad roads are now a thing of the past in V.I because the Lagos State Government has done most of the roads in these areas.

Property trend in terms of pricing
Well it is normal for prices to go up because if you buy a property, you should look forward to make back the money in the next 10 to 12 years. So you cannot expect the same size of property I rented out in 1991 to command the same rental value. A property in Surulere in 1991 was renting for like N10,000 and now the same property command around N400,000. Inflation also contributes to the trend. In those days, Nigeria was more of civil servant reliant society but now you find a lot of private businesses coming up. It is a progress; we are now a country that relies on entrepreneurial excellence. Also, demand for more desirable location like V.I adds to the value of properties in the area.