Barrister Remi Adebiyi is a big real estate player in Lagos. He is the Chairman of Mercyland Estates Limited which is into Estate Agency, Property Development, Property Documentation & Regularisation, Real Estate Investment Advisory Service and many other real estate consultancy services.
He is not in it alone. He runs the business with his lovely wife, Mrs. Florence Bisi Adebiyi. Both of them are not only lawyers, they are pastors. He is a Provincial Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. His wife is also a Pastor. He was a top litigation lawyer before he left Law practice to go into real estate. And his wife also left her corporate job with a big company to co-run Maryland Estates Limited.
After all the critical hiccups they suffered in their new business, the couple has perfected their real estate business and today they are ranked high for their age long reputation of keeping to their promise of delivering clients their true worth.
Last week, City People Publisher, SEYE KEHINDE, and ADEOLA FAGBIYE were at an official the launch of their 2 new products namely: Mercyland Delight Estate located at Maidan/Awoyaya in the Ibeju-Lekki axis and Mercyland Farm Estate, at Asero, via Siun. At that event, Pastor Remi Adebiyi revealed how he and his wife left Law for real estate.
Last Friday, Lagos Lawyer, Pastor Remi Adebiyi and his wife, Pastor Florence Adebiyi hosted real estate marketers to a Real Estate Forum/product launch at the Empowerment Centre, on Allen Avenue. He was there to introduce his 2 new real estate products to the marketers who had gathered to be part of that historic launch. At that event, he presented Mercyland Delight Estate located at Awoyaya and Mercyland Farm Estate, Asero via Siun.
Just before he officially launched the 2 products, he spoke about how he got frustrated with going for litigation in court and he left the legal profession for real estate. He had gone to court that day for a case and he was told the case couldn’t be heard that day and the Lawyers involved in the case were asked to pick a new date for hearing. Where he stood frustrated, Pastor Adebiyi said he heard a voice in Yoruba saying Se bi wa se ma ba lo ni yen? (is that how you will continue in frustration) referring to the series of adjournments that lawyers often face in court. “ Somebody was behind me talking to me, “ explained Pastor Adebiyi. “I heard it.
He said is that how you will continue?. So, I packed my bag and I left the court. And I got home. And I told my wife. See, this litigation thing, from today, me, I am not going to court” and she said to me, “Ki La Ma ma Jee? (What are we going to be eating?) And I said don’t worry. We would pray and God will show us what we would be eating. I said after all, you are a Company Secretary/legal adviser to one conglomerate I said to her, in any case you are earning a salary. We would be spending your salary for now until God tells us what we would be doing”. Shortly there after, God answered. We first went into one multi level marketing business which gave us a financial breakthrough and when the Nigerian factor came in to that multi level marketing company we said to ourselves people must not find both of us in this kind of business. The Nigerian factor came in and we stopped.
And we said to ourselves lets pray again. And we did. And God spoke to me. He said you started with property. Go back to it. That’s true because my 1st year as a Lawyer somebody took me into Lagos through Lagos –Epe Expressway. At that time, from Mobil headquarters down to Epe, there was no Lekki, Phase 1, every where was bush. As we were going, I said to myself, but they said there is no more land in Lagos. I said to myself that day that I will deal in properties in Lagos.
But you know what? The very first one I did went wrong. It went completely wrong, I almost ran away from Lagos. Because as a young Lawyer, I didn’t know you had to check things out. I was too trusting of people. They just showed me land. This is land. We want to sell this land. I thought the land was good. That was in 1990/91. Before we knew it we had already committed about N1million into a property We had committed N996,000 into that property before we knew that the land was not free from government acquisition. Those who paid for the land came after us. It was tough. After about 2 and a half years we were able to resolve that problem and I said to my self:
No more Property. I ran away from property. When the issue of the other multi level marketing that we went into started drifting, God said to me go back to property”.
“So, we started again. We would sell one. We would sell 2, until year 2007 when Mercyland Estate Limited was registered. That was when we started business, in a big way.
By the grace of God as we speak now, we have done 3 estate layouts. We have Mercyland 1 Estate which started in 2006. When we started that all inclusive it was N1.2 million.
And then we have Mercyland 2 Estate which is by the entrance of the new Golf course. When we built it then in 2007/2008, all inclusive, it was N1,450,000. To the glory of God, right now, land sells there for N8.5million. And then we did Mercylands Estate 3. That is just the other side off the Golf course. We are launching another product today. They are 2 different products. We have a company policy. And what is that policy? Anyland that does not have clean or good title, we don’t touch. Why? Because of the initial experience we had. So, you can be rest assured that any property from Mercyland Estate Limited, you can be rest assured it has a clean title. One other problems for those of us doing this business is the issue of Land Grabbers or Omo Onile.
They will always come up, I won’t deceive you. But by the grace of God, we know how to deal with the issue. We have done 3 layouts now. This is the 4th one. We are calling it Mercyland Delight because God has actually done great things for us. In this property business, he has done great, great things for us. Mercyland Delights is just about 5 minutes away from Mayfair Gardens. There is a filling station called Dabitek immediately after Mayfair Garden”.
“Once you get to Dabitek you will drive in by the face of Dabitek. Then you drive straight to where you have this property. Adjacent to it, is one big pediatric hospitals being built by a group from the U.S. It is there, it is under construction and it is so massive. There is also Yaba Tech Staff Estate.
They have just bought it. They have fenced it. So it is in an area with great potential. The land is Dryland.
It is what we call Dry Land in Lekki. It is not water logged. It is planned. It is not sandfilled. The texture is just as it is. There is no issue with Omo Onile. There is no issue with land grabbers. It comes with C Of O. By the special grace of God, we have been in business, formally for 10 years now, but informally for more than 2 decades. And whatever we have promised to do, by the Grace of God we have done. And this new one will not be different from what we have done”.
“Now, we are doing an all-encompassing thing which we didn’t do before. We’ve learnt from experience that if people have paid for land, if you ask them to pay for infrastructure, they will say I am coming. That is why we have put in personal money to make sure our estates are developed, fenced just to make sure that we don’t lose the land.”
“This time around what we have here is all encompassing, like the cost of the plot, the cost of Survey, deed of assignment, agency fee, perimeter fence round the whole estate, drainage, gate paved roads with interlock blocks all for N10 million Promo Price.
So what makes our new Mercy and Delight Estate unique is: There are No Hidden Charges, cost covers Land, Survey, Deed of Assignment and infrastructure, Drainage Road, Perimeter Fence and Electrification.
And we set out what infrastructure covers like drainage, road, electrification. God has been great to us. As I stand here to speak to you, I can tell you that we owe nobody. The promo price is 10million. You can also pay instalmentally and this will come toN12.5 million at the edn of the day. You can pay instalmentally.
Our second estate that we are launching today is Mercyland Farm Estate.
It is located in a village called Asero, very close to Abeokuta. If you are going to Abeokuta after the Sagamu inter change and you turn to go to Abeokuta you will get to a place called Siun, from that spot you are just about 7 minutes to the farm estate itself. The road is motorable from Lagos down to the very sport.
We all know that the in thing today in Nigeria and all over the world is farming in Nigeria we have our 180 million people must eat. To produce food we have to go into farming. And to go into food you need land. So, we have this farm estate that by the grace of God will run organically.
The bye product from one section of the farm you can be used to generate other things that will be needed in other sections. The cost per are is N700,000. And acre is 6 plots of land.
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