Can you give a brief of your self?
My name is Valentine AHMAD, I was born in ETSAKO W. LGA of Edo State in the mid 70s. I spent a better part of my childhood in that rural area. After my secondary school I travelled to Paris where I obtained different degrees amongst them are desktop publishing and estate development. I always knew I would come and use my knowledge to do something in my fatherland. And today we have a group of companies comprising of valaslim construction, which is a company specialized in contracts, like construction of road, schools and different kind of governmental projects, findalim ltd which is specialized mainly on the oil and gas sector and VALASLIM LTD the mother board company mainly specialized in the real estate development.
How long have you been into real estate business and how many project or estate have VALASLIM LTD handled?
We’ve been in business since 2006 and we came into the Nigeria market 2010, as a result of a dire need for a reliable investment platform here in Africa. A lot of my friends in the diaspora fell victims of some dubious people where they will buy a land, after some time they realize that the land where not bought from the rightful owners or they have double allocation or even members of their family extort them from their hard earned money and yet don’t buy the properties agreed after receiving the money. So we decided to come into the market and established this bridge to link up the diaspora with the properties in Nigeria and we have about 5/6 projects , most of which are collaborations with other real estate firms; like (LIGHTHOUSE Estate and LIGHT HOUSE SELECT) that we did with DSL LTD here in Abuja, we have the AMBASSAGE INV collaboration which gave birth to HARMONY GARDENS, and we also did a collaboration with PENTAGONE REAL Estate in Lagos and now we are doing the PARIS LUXURY HOME in Abuja .
Sir tell us about PARIS LUXURY HOMES ?
Paris luxury home is a dream come through for many aspiring home owners who want to combine comfort with luxury at affordable price. You see with our experience in real estate in paris and new york we were able to bring together the best of those places at affordable price because of our expertise technically and the raw materials we are able to source here in Africa and that’s what makes it a dream come through for these categories of person.
How do you stay organized to make sure you make every appointment and are always on time ?
That’s a very interesting question, you see , there is a saying that goes the white man has watch and the African man has time. The truth is that it does not say well of the African man who thinks he has time. For somebody like me, who shuttles between my Abuja office, my New York office and Paris office, am obliged to be organized. Most of the time, I plan my days, weeks and even months in advance. The ticket that will take me from Abuja to New York have already been bought and the one taking me to Paris is already available. So you can imaging when I come 30mins late to catch up a flight obviously the flight is not going to wait for me. Missing a flight is wasting money which offcourse is not good for business when I know providing affordable houses is our main concern, so we don’t throw away money. Yes we are obliged to be organized.
Even the bible says so, Eph 5 :16… making the best use of your time, (ESV )
Talk about a time when you had a hard time creating a relationship with a tenant , owner or investors. How would you have handle it differently?
One of my experiences that I will handle differently in the future is this man who came has a purchaser of one of our properties in 2019 , he had explained to us that his money was going to be available in three months times , that he needed to put his family in safety in one of our locations, so we allowed him. He moved in with his family , we rented the place for him temporary pending when his money will be available for the outright purchase because the property was meant for outright sales. But he never fulfilled his part of the deal. This is 2021 we are still on the transaction. We have gone to court , won the case against him but we are still waiting for the court to enforce the judgment to send this client out of the property . you see in the future an ABEG will not give our keys to the person but a well-structured payment plan will.
Is real estate business worth investing in?
Yes, it is a good investment, when it is done with the right mindset and a proper planning.
What is your biggest challenge as a real estate developer?
Business in Africa generally has a lot of challenges and Nigeria is not an exception, and this is mainly because of the infrastructure that is not well put in place.
Specifically, in real estate business there is this major problem called “double allocation”. It is a situation where by you buy a landed property and someone else will claim ownership on same property with same document but different name and all you can do at that time is to go to court to fight or you settle with the other person and that is a lot of uncertainty which is not good for business. Because you already have clients that are either living inside the estate or they are building and these can lead to embarrassment or court orders and police cases. That is one of the biggest challenge we have in this business.
What quality makes your company different from other real estate companies?
I will say what make us different from other real estate developers /companies, are
- our ethics, our respect for standard we hold our clients on high esteem and we do everything possible to give them what we promise to give them.
- also our experience in the western world, where we have some specifications that we impose on ourselves even though they are not mandatory here in Nigeria like NF, ESO, CEN, but we decide to do them . Because our product speak more about us than what ever we can say with words. So we give them standard , luxury at affordable prices and not everybody does that so we don’t really put money first.
- The fact that we have offices abroad makes our client who are mainly expatriate believe in us more easily through these addresses.
……the list goes on.
How many properties, on average do you sell each year?
You see, for our property sales the figures really differs we try to fix targets for our marketers but between last year 2020 which was covid year when all businesses and ours suffered from the lockdown and this year, after just two quarters, God has already restored all, we have doubled the sales we made last year. I will say it really depends on the year.
Currently you have properties selling in Abuja , can you throw more light on that.
Right now one of our main project is PARIS LUXURY HOMES even though we have other project ongoing, like light house select and some new project . we are currently working on and will start very soon . but PARIS LUXURY HOMES is our main project. Actually , it’s an estate were we sell lands and already built houses, people can buy already built houses, or buy lands build by themselves or require that we build for them maybe because they want to alter some internal structures of the houses .
This estate with the major road that just passed in front of it, and the internal road being put in place, electricity that is already there, the drainage, water supply, it’s a very nice opportunity for investment where you can invest and be very happy that you did in a very short while, because we have very limited number of plot available and very soon there will be none left in PARIS LUXURY HOMES, even though we still have other projects buyers can key in.
Where do you see Paris LUXURY HOMES in the next five years
Well in the next five years , really I see paris luxury home being an avantgarde , having giving birth to a lot other estate like phase 1,2,3,4,5 and even more. Where other real estate firms come to copy what has been established.
And also hopefully even for many more years to come it being a prestige for the city of Abuja .
Thanks for having me.