Damola Akindolire, Executive Director, Real Estate Development, Prof. Charles Inyangete, Managing Director/CEO of NMRC, and Femi Akintunde, Group Managing Director/CEO, Alpha Mead at the official Signing of MoU on Affordable Housing between Alpha Mead Development Company (AMDC) and NMRC.

In their quest to improve access to quality affordable homes and deepen Nigeria’s mortgage market, Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) and Alpha Mead Development Company (AMDC); a Strategic Business Unit of one of Africa’s leading Total Real Estate Solutions Companies, Alpha Mead Group; has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

The MoU, which was signed on the side line of the just concluded 11th Abuja Housing Show, will allow AMDC and NMRC to work together on housing finance, training, research, advisory and project structuring to increase the stock of affordable housing in the country. It will also provide and permit relevant technical support and advice to Alpha Mead in relation to the residential Real Estate market in Nigeria.

Furthermore, the partnership between both parties will now make it easier and faster for customers pre-qualified by AMDC to access mortgage from the member financial institutions of the NMRC.

Speaking during the signing ceremony in Abuja, Prof. Charles Inyangete,NMRC Managing Director, described the MoU as a remarkable move; saying that NMRC decided to work with Alpha Mead because of its innovative and technology-driven approach to increase affordable housing stock in Nigeria and the Facilities Management expertise of the company to also maintain the projects after construction.

“The combination of these capacities that Alpha Mead bring to the partnership will give the market the assurance that property prices can be sustained, going forward; and we can all deliver to the specific needs of the customers”, the NMRC boss said.

He furthered: “So we at NMRC keyed into this relationship because we will like to see this Alpha Mead model succeed. We believe it is a model that will allow more and more transaction in the housing development value chain and feed our member institutions with more projects to finance”.

On his side, the Group Managing Director of Alpha Mead, Femi Akintunde,an engineer, expressed delight at the partnership. He described the partnership is a serious demonstration of NMRC’s commitment to reduce the nation’s increasing housing deficit; and an encouraging recognition of Alpha Mead’s innovative approach to delivering quality and affordable housing to Nigerians.

According to him, “it is increasingly becoming obvious that the conventional building methods cannot bridge Nigerian housing gap, especially in the face of the myriad of challenges that face the affordable housing value chain”.

“So what we bring to the market are the possibilities of addressing the challenges of affordability and quality; which are two critical issues that are inhibiting the nation’s affordable housing market”.

Engr. Akintunde noted that the current structure of the market makes is a tall order for people in the middle-income bracket to own homes because of the high entry barrier. He also pointed to the challenges of lack of skilled artisans, the high cost of building materials, and lack of standardised building and quality processes as having adverse effects on the quality of building in the market.

“So on the one hand, we are addressing the issue of quality by using technology that guarantees repeated quality, straight edges and structural integrity; and on the other hand, we are addressing the challenges of affordability by using our technology to achieve up to 15% savings for our customers”, Akintunde explained.