Head, Business Development and Retail Sales, Mixta Nigeria, Mr. Tunji Osinulu; Deputy CEO, Mixta Africa, Mr. Daniel Font; Creative Director, BAP Productions, Mrs. Bolanle Austen-Peters and MD, Mixta Nigeria, Mr. Kola Ashiru-Balogun at the briefing.
Amid paucity of funds in the real estate sector, Lagos-based property development firm, Mixta Real Estate Plc has increased its liquidity with N5billion bond, which will be used to refinance existing debts and affordable housing projects.
The Guaranteed Fixed Rate Bond was listed in the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and issued under its N30 billion medium term note programme to refinance loans taken from FBN Merchant Bank and Access Bank. The fixed-rate bond with a par value of N100 at a rate of N1, 000 per unit has a five-year tenor and will be due in 2022.
The company plans is to increase the amount to about N5billion or N10 billion. GuarantCo Limited, a multilateral development finance company, is the guarantor for the bond issue. GuarantCo was founded by the development agencies and governments of the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, as well as the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG).
Mixta commenced operations in February 2006 as a real estate investment fund management company promoted by Asset and Resource Management Company (ARM) Limited. In 2007, the fund was converted to a property company, ARM Properties Plc, as a result of operational and tax limitations encountered due to current legislation governing real estate investment funds in Nigeria.
In 2015, ARM acquired Mixta Africa, an Africa-focused large scale property development company headquartered in Spain with subsidiary operations in several countries across North and sub-Saharan Africa. The combination of ARM Properties and Mixta Africa gave birth to Mixta Real Estate Plc.
“The combination of Mixta Africa and ARM Properties Plc has a land bank of approximately 2.5 million square metres with close to 10,000 housing units delivered across Africa. Mixta Africa has more than 50 experienced professionals and subsidiaries in six countries,” according to the Managing Director, Mixta Real Estate Plc, Mr. Kola Ashiru-Balogun.
He said the company invests in property development projects across the real estate spectrum within the commercial, retail and residential property segments. We also provide real estate advisory services, and take on special projects in medium to large-scale real estate development projects, with a goal to taking advantage of the developing organized retail real estate sector.
Ashiru-Balogun who spoke to media personnel in Lagos disclosed that the real estate company would be investing 20 per cent of the net proceeds from the bond in the construction of its Affordable Housing Project. For us, there are a lot of opportunities for us there. We’re able to deliver 5, 000 in Morocco in a year.
“Last year, in-spite of the economic turn, we sold about 600 units. There are challenges in Nigerian market. We have been advising the federal government to come up with social housing scheme under the Family Home Scheme. Within Lagos, we rolled out three projects. Our delivery capacity is now better. We spent a lot of time on our designs and use locally available materials. ”
On the target market, he said, “most of the homes we have done in Nigeria have been within the upper N25 million. But with this combination we have now, we an incredible opportunity to come down the ladder to sub-N10 million homes and to do that, it means we have to go areas where land is not exorbitant and where there is a critical max of buyers.
“Outskirt of Lagos is a key area for us and Abuja is another important area for us. We will also be looking at Port Harcourt. These are the few areas we are going to concentrate on in Nigeria for now.” Within PortHarcourt, the company has 250 hectares in Omagwa, where work has begun on the residential scheme and golf course. A land in the scheme goes for N22,000 per square metre.
“For example, in Senegal with a smaller population than Nigeria, we have done over 600 homes in the past few years. The entry price for homes in this country is about 30,000 Euros, an equivalent of N6.5 million or thereabout. We think that if we are able to achieve such pricing in Nigeria, we would be appealing to a wider population of prospective homeowners.”
Ashiru-Balogun said: “We need government with an aspiration to deliver homes to low income earners and to back that up with policy and also ensure that people can borrow long term at affordable rate to acquire their homes.
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Guardian
