AI Powered Real Estate Company, BuyLetLive, Launches Property Price Index Report

BuyLetLive, an online real estate marketplace has launched the second edition of its annual “Nigeria Property Price Index Report”.

The Nigerian first AI powered real estate portal that is helping real estate buyers and sellers to consummate transactions in minutes, launched the report recently.

It is a 38-page document that analyses price movements in Nigeria’s real estate market in 2023 and includes opinions on topical issues.

From the foreword, the Group CEO, Engr Ola Daramola noted that 2023 was a particularly challenging year for the global economy, and the Nigerian real estate market was no exception.

He mentioned that BuyLetLive like many other businesses in the industry, showed remarkable strength and unity in the face of unprecedented challenges.

Ola said that the company had strengthened their engineering team in 2023 and grew the inventory of properties on their platform and was also recognised by the Africa Housing Awards as the best online real estate portal of the year.

Speaking on why this report is needed by the industry, the CEO at BuyLetLive, Gbenga Osowe, quoted a PWC publication that puts the value of dead capital in Nigeria’s real estate market at 900 billion dollars.

According to Gbenga, a large chunk of value especially within the residential and land asset classes in Nigeria are lost due to the opaqueness in the market.

Fixing this problem from a private sector perspective will require concerted effort in market research.
Martin Uche, who leads the research team at BuyLetLive stated that there was an overall spike in property prices with a double-digit increase in residential real estate prices across the country. The increases were underpinned by rising cost of building materials, FX volatilities and operational costs.

Commenting on the commercial market, Martin Uche mentioned that since 2018, the commercial real estate market has continued to struggle either due to oversupply, decreasing occupier pool or shrinking purchasing power. This has been more pronounced in Lagos and Abuja, particularly in the market for large-scale prime retail and office projects.

Other highlights captured within the report were the slowdown in Proptech funding in Nigeria. Martin noted that the Proptech spaces that was once a darling to investors, did hit a rough patch in 2023 as a result of global financial market volatility. The report mentioned that Nigeria’s Proptech startups had raised more than $7m in funding in 2022. According to the BuyLetLive report, this constituted more than 43% of the $16m total funds raised in Kenya, Egypt and Nigeria combined. However, in the last quarter of 2023, the funding value had fallen to less than $2m, representing a significant drop of over 70%. Despite these many headwinds, the report shared a strong optimism for the year ahead.

BuyLetLive is a Nigerian proptech that connects property seekers for rent, lease or purchase with verified real estate agents, developers and homeowners, offering advisory and media promotion services to developers who want more visibility and leads for their developments.

The company boasts of a robust digital ecosystem enabling all stakeholders to interact more transparently and with ease. The proptech hinted at plans to roll out new products and services in the coming months as part of its mission to revolutionise Nigeria’s real estate industry leveraging technology.