Investors show interest in N1.2b bank’s property

Notwithstanding the lull in the property market, investors have indicated interest in 23 bank’s owned property worth over N1.2 billion across the country.

The property includes; bare lands, uncompleted building, residential, shops and office complex, purpose built sport arena and uncompleted rundown shops among others.

Investors were selected through a bidding process after completing a ‘know your client’ form and paying 10 per cent of the bid amount. The exercise coordinated by the estate surveying and valuation firm, Messrs Emeka Okoronkwo and Associates ended last week.

Essentially, successful bidders were required to pay 90per cent balance of the bid within 60 calendar days of the receipt of approval of the sale from the sales agent, failing which the 10per cent become un-refundable and the ‘selling party’ will be free to offer property to other buyers among others.

Among the property sold are a bare land approximately 929metres square located at Southwest, Ikoyi Lagos, which topped as the highest bided possession with a price of N215million. The huge price, according expert was due to the location and the size of the property. A residential property located at Park close, Apapa, Lagos with a price of about N145million was the second highest bided property.

The third is an office complex with warehouse located on Bank Road, Kaduna grabbed at the sum of N100million while a bare land located at Calabar highway, Ugep, Cross River State was the least bided at N4million, among others.

The bidding process was initiated to short-circuit the time that such operation normally take, ensure that the people who are interested in the property are the one who gets the property and to be guarded by the reflection of open market dynamics, according to Mr. Emeka Okoronkwo who is the Principal Partner, Emeka Okoronkwo & Associate.

He urged government to emulate such open and transparent bidding process, stating that banks have need to dispose property most times and society needs property while the banks are not in the business of selling property yet they need result when they want to put them off for sale.

Okoronkwo declared that it’s unnecessary to have all property in the hand of government and its agencies and allowing them to lay fallow when there are people who can utilise such possessions for economic development.

“Why is it that so many people are under-housed yet there are so many houses in the hand of government whether it is Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria or others, there is absolutely no reason why property seized should deteriorate in the hand of government for five years with the excuse of looking for people who will buy it, it doesn’t make sense. We recommend this type of process for a lot of people to achieve result and every time we have done it, we achieve result”.

He further explained that the process was opened and nothing can be backward from it, “We will engage the bidders in collaboration with all the people involved and the point between going forward is for them to make their legal searches, bring the draft copy of the deeds of assignment and the bank will sign the deed of assignment for them and hand over property to them inline with the approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)”.

Okoronkwo said, “This is about the seventh bid process carried out by our company for different banks in the country. The bid processes that we have institutionalized in Nigeria, solves problems in a lot of ways. It cut down time for sale of such property through a transparent process without acrimony. It is a technical process that requires a lot of experience”.