How to Play and Succeed in Nigeria’s Emerging Total Real Estate Solutions Industry


Statistics from the Nigerian Stock Exchange for March 31st, 2019 indicates that the total market capitalization was N11.7 trillion generated from 169 companies listed on the stock within 12 sectors.  Over the years, agriculture, construction and real estate, consumer goods, industrial goods, healthcare, information and communications technology, natural resources and, oil and gas have been seen the significant industries contributing to the country’s economic growth and sustainability.
Activities and expected functions of these industries are interwoven. For instance, real estate and construction cannot make its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product without the support industrial goods, ICT and healthcare. As businesses continue to innovate at process and product levels, Infoprations has discovered that a new industry is emerging. It appears that Total Real Estate Solutions is evolving from the stable of Alpha Mead and Facilities Management, Nigeria’s leading FM company.
After several months of monitoring the shapes the industry is taking, Infoprations believes that TRES is about serving most or all the needs of a particular group of customers, signifying that companies that deem it fit to compete in the space must position themselves using a needs-based strategies. TRES is also about segmenting customers in different ways.
For example, total real estate solutions should not neglect the people at the bottom of the pyramid, people in the rural areas. There must be inclusive solutions not only premium solutions to the people in urban areas and upper of the pyramid. Beyond people, TRES companies should consider businesses at lower ebb too. Companies should not position themselves using variety-based strategies. Solutions in TRES should not be communicated using the product or solution varieties.
Forces Underpinning and Constraining Existing Industries
As it is now, TRES is a combination of real estate development, security, facilities and healthcare management industries. The idea is to have an industry that provides aggregated solutions for the built environment and the users, appropriating integrated processes and solutions or products. These industries are being measured quarterly and yearly by the National Bureau of Statistics using real estate and construction, water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation, administrative and support services, human health and social services, professional, scientific and technical services.
In our model, we considered water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation, and administrative and support services as part of the facility management industry. Healthcare management was analysed within human health and social services. However, we did not dispute the fact that the healthcare management segment of the TRES could also be measured within the administrative and support services, especially when an FM company is engaged to maintain health equipment not the entire health facility. The security aspect of the TRES was analysed employing relevant Gross Domestic Product data within professional, scientific and technical services. Real estate and construction were analysed differently using individual data released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
Our analysis reveals that companies in TRES industry need to make a number of strategic moves in the next few years, for the industry to make meaningful impacts and contribution to the GDP. The performance of the analysed industries in the last 3 years is low compared to international standards.
From the global competitiveness perspective, businesses in the TRES and stakeholders need to devise strategies and mechanisms that would help in improving  efficacy of corporate boards, macroeconomic environment, foreign competition, local competition, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial services meeting business needs, ease of access to loans, financial market development, availability of latest technologies, firm-level technology absorption, local supplier quantity, local supplier quality, capacity for innovation, spending on research and development.
This is imperative because our analysis indicates that existing industries that TRES is leveraging connected with these factors negatively between 2016 and 2017, signifying poor performance at process, product or solution and technological levels. In our analysis, we found that the higher the rankings (poor status) of these factors, the less the contribution of the industries to the GDP growth in 2016 and 2017.
For instance, a 1 point increase in the ranking of the factors in 2016 reduced the real estate contribution to the GDP by 30.9%. This was dipped to 19.8% in 2017. This is an indication that companies and governments’ efforts improved the rankings of the factors positively in 2017.  The similar efforts were futile in 2016 and 2017 for the water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation. Our analysis shows that the increase in the rankings led to 54.8% and 85.7% reduction in the contribution of the sector to the GDP during the years.
The narrative was not different from the administrative and support services. The sector’s contribution was affected by 22.8% and 57% in 2016 and 2017 respectively. For the human health and social services, the poor rankings of the factors denied its contribution to the GDP by 88.1% in 2016 and 99% in 2017. With a 13.4% reduction, the poor rankings only had a mild impact on the construction sector in 2017. The impact was 94% in 2016. The 2016’s reduction attained by the construction sector was surged by 0.8% for the professional, scientific and technical services sector in 2017. The rankings affected the sector’s contribution by 94.8% during the year. In 2016, 85.8% was recorded for the sector, our analysis reveals.
Link among the GDP growth of the select sectors

Since the real estate is the base of the total real estate solution, we carried connection analysis of the previous performance of the industries TRES is leveraging. From the analysis, it is clear that real estate linked with construction and professional, scientific and technical services positively, while negative connection was recorded in the other three sectors. A one percent increase in the contribution of real estate to the GDP between 2016 and 2018 led to 11.1% increase in the contribution of the construction sector to the GDP.
Over 10% increase in the contribution of professional, scientific and technical services was found when real estate contribution was at 1%. For the water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation, a 1.6% reduction in its contribution was discovered when real estate had 1% contribution to the GDP.  It was a 92.2% reduction in administrative and support services sector when real estate attained 1% contribution. One percent contribution of the real estate was also discovered as 30.5% reduction in the contribution of the human health and social services to the GDP.

From the insights, it is obvious that TRES performance would largely depend on the extent to which companies and stakeholders exploit opportunities in real estate, construction and professional, scientific and technical services. As an emerging industry, TRES is also likely to have proper shape when the weaknesses and threats in other sectors are eliminated using appropriate strategies.
For instance, efforts should be made to remove clogs within the market fundamentals, performance measurement, regulatory and legal, transaction process and sustainability in the real estate sector to make the sector highly transparent. This is necessary based on the fact that the country’s poor ranking in the global real estate transparency index affected the real estate sector’s contribution to the GDP by 13.5% between 2016 and 2018.
Critical Capabilities Transferring (CCT)
Companies with integrated solutions in each of the industries that form TRES have a better chance of winning in TRES space, our analysis suggests. In this regard, Alpha Mead’s rapid turnaround, in terms of strategic business unit with vertical integration that allows the combination of existing resources towards sustainable value delivery, is essential to its cost reduction and effective operational efficiency in the new space.

Comments