Everywhere the music remains that the new oil is data. And it has been noted by professionals and academics that businesses that embrace data-driven culture will always stand tall in terms of creating and delivering tailored value to every stakeholder. The preliminary result of our analysis of real estate market landscape in Nigeria shows that the market is mainly concentrated in Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt and Kano when one considers expected formalised processes for operational activities in the market.
However, as our earlier report Ibadan Data Economy shows, it is clear that Ibadan is gaining some level of traction in modern means of curating, mining and refining data for developing solutions to various socioeconomic challenges. From traditional to modern research approaches, small and big data can be collected, analysed and drawing insights for smart decision making.
Harvesting small data through traditional research approaches such as survey, in-depth interview, experimental, observation among others, have the capacity of increasing developers, realtors, investors, engineers, builders and prospective homeowners’ knowledge about where to find land, what to build, how to build it and how to price including marketing it. As good as the traditional approaches in getting the needed data, they are mainly limited to what they can collect in static time, a deficit, which numerous modern data collection tools such as Google Trends, Hadoop, Apache, MapReduce among others are eliminating.
As people demographics keep changing and the city experiences new developments, it is time for the stakeholders to prioritise decision making with the adoption of the two data categories. This means placing the city along with other developed real estate markets in the country and possibly getting it ahead of them.
As it is being done in other developed markets in Nigeria and other countries, land acquisition, building, marketing and selling, and maintenance decisions need to be made after exploration of large datasets that encompass both demographics and psychographics of every stakeholder. In the developed markets, “home prices are not just driven by having nearby grocery stores. Rather, they are driven by access to the right quantity, mix, and quality of community features.”
When traditional approaches are employed mostly, they have the tendency of drawing hypotheses needed towards the choice of alternatives before making a decision difficult. Available information suggests that “resident surveys, mobile phone signal patterns, and reviews of local restaurants can help identify “hyperlocal” patterns—granular trends at the city block level rather than at the city level.” Digging and using big data will also help in averting risks associated with land acquisition, construction, marketing and selling, and maintenance of varied real estate products.
Additional reports by Mubaarak Abdulhameed [a Builder and Quality Engineer] and Mariam Akanni [a Real Estate Marketer]
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