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LAGOS Property Player, OLAMIDE ADELEYE
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Reveals Success Story Of HERITAGE Dwellings
Barrister Olamide Elizabeth Adeleye is a Real Estate Developer. She is also a philanthropist, an author and a lawyer with over 2 decades of post-call experience. She has engaged in active consultancy and solicitor’s work and has researched extensively in Property and Land Law, Commercial Law, Corporate Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).
Before founding her own firm, she was involved in active legal practice in the law firms of Ola Apalara & Co., Ogunniyi Ogundare & Co., and Dele Farotimi & Co. where she rose very quickly to become the head of the Real Estate arm of the firm.
As a Consultant, she has provided Legal support services to companies in the banking and real estate sectors of the economy. She has equally advised on and negotiated out of court settlement of commercial disputes and has successfully and extensively mediated over family related issues.
She is the Chief Executive Officer of Heritage Dwellings, a dynamic real estate development company specializing in residential and commercial real estate projects. The company has established itself as a trusted partner in delivering innovative and sustainable development solutions in Africa. The CSR arm of the company helps to renovate and refurbish public school libraries and also ensures they have at least one Computer for the students rather than teaching Computer theory classes.
Lamide’, as fondly called by close friends and associates graduated from the University of Ibadan in 2000 and was called to the Nigerian Bar as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 2002. With a CELTA certification from the university of Cambridge and having lived outside of Nigeria for many years, she has gained vast experience (with the rare advantage of a grounded world-view) in teaching Communication Skills both to teachers and students of varied nationalities.
She currently facilitates a class in Communication Skills at the prestigious Nigerian Institute of Chartered Arbitrators (NICA). Also, she is currently pursuing her Master’s program (LLM) at the Queen Mary University of London.
Mrs. Olamide Elizabeth Adeleye is an enthusiastic, self-motivated, reliable, responsible, and hard-working person who works with a lot of integrity. She is a team player who is able to easily adapt under pressure and adhere to strict deadlines, having served in so many leadership roles from her early days, till date.
A few weeks back, this energetic lady spoke to ISAAC ABIMBADE (08155107955) about her journey into real estate sector, how she started as a lawyer over 2 decades a go and many other things. Below are excerpts.
Can you tell us about your real estate company, Heritage Dwellings?
First and foremost, I would say that I’m a lawyer with about 22 years of post-college experience. And have been conducting due diligence for clients, especially in the diaspora, who are interested in real estate transactions.
And we (Heritage Dwellings) have thrived based on the word-of-mouth recommendation and practicing with a lot of integrity. And so I would say that, thankfully, in over two decades of handling real estate transactions for clients, we don’t have a single court case. And then after a while, clients began clamoring for more, asking when are you going to start your own project, that you keep recommending people’s projects.
And just a couple of years ago, we started Heritage Dwellings. And a lot of our projects are at the Lekki Free Tree Zone. And I would say that, thankfully, the projects are making a huge progress.
So within a matter of months, after we started our first project, we sold out.
When did this start exactly?
We built a few units about two years ago at Omolee Estate. But we went fully into real estate development last year, 2023. And to date, right now, we have about 4 projects. We have at the Lekki Free Trade Zone and Epe. So most of our projects are at the Lekki Free Trade Zone refinery area. We have both Commercial and Residential real estates.
Are you saying you are not into Land brokerage, that you are just into development?
Yeah, fully into development. But we help clients to acquire Land, yes. We are not just building estates. We are building estates on behalf of clients. We help them to acquire land and to develop. We are also a construction company as well. We build for them, we help them to acquire Land. But the thing is, we don’t typically acquire individual or standalone land. That’s why we build our own estates, to give a lot of comfort to the subscribers. Comfort, safety, security, authenticity of title documents.
We encourage our clients to be a part of an estate development, as against buying a standalone property or land.
The real estate sector is male-dominated, how have you been coping? How has it been for a woman like you?
Well I would say what has helped me is my legal background. And the fact that I run my own law practice, YBA & Co-Solicitors. We started off with helping, engaging professionals in the estate management sector to help to manage the property acquired by our clients. And of course that really grew and we discovered that we’re spending a lot more time on real estate transactions than on the legal aspect of our practice itself. And also because we have thrived based on word of mouth recommendation and integrity over the years. I will tell you that what has really helped me. Like I said earlier on, when we started, the very first project that we started, we needed about 20 subscribers and what I did was called our current clients base and in two days we were sold out.
Was that your breakthrough project?
Yes, and that was our very first project.
And I will tell you that all of them, not a single one of those first 20 subscribers that we had requested to see the title document for due diligence. None of them requested to inspect, you know, the land or see where the land was.
I’m really thankful that it’s been very encouraging because of our clients that I’ve trusted and I’ve believed in us over the years.
Can you tell us maybe two or three things that stand you out apart from what you have mentioned above?
Well, what stands us out is under-promising and over-delivering. Yeah, so for me, that is very key.
And being fully focused on delivering the project as promised, that has really helped us. And you know, in this industry, word of mouth recommendation is very key. Yeah, and then antecedents as well.
You know, anybody who wants to deal with you wants to know what have you done before. What are your antecedents. All those things have really helped us. Key thing is under-promising and over-delivering. And I would say another thing that has really, really helped us is really lowering our profits margin when it comes to real estate investment to help our clients to have a quick return on their investment.
I would tell you that in as much as everybody is complaining about Inflation, about the naira devaluation, I would tell you that the rate at which property is appreciating at the Lekki Free Trade Zone is much higher than the rate at which Inflation is going. And so, like, some of our clients that invested with us just about 15 months ago have more than doubled their investment already. And that’s also because when we look at ourselves and look at all those around us, our rates are significantly lower because we want our clients to be able to have a quick return on their investments.
What can you say about the regulators because there are so many complaints about them from the players?
I would say apart from blaming the regulators, so the regulators is like, when you blame the regulators, it’s like you’re finding faults with the cake when it has been fully baked, rather than focusing on the mixture before it was baked.
Like I said earlier on, we’ve been in this thing for almost 2 decades in real estate itself, but I’ve been in legal practice for over two decades, 22 years. I don’t have a single court case, and that’s because we get to the very root of the title. A lot of people depend on legal due diligence.
We don’t do just legal due diligence. We have to do the social due diligence, especially if the title is gazetted, it’s not Governor’s Consent or CEO, then you have to go to the very roots, meet the Baale, meet the locales, meet the Surveyor.
Who has this land? Can you confirm it? And so by doing that, we’ve been able to get to the roots of a lot of title documents, and the ones that we see a hint of a problem, we run away from it, we don’t even bother. But you know, a lot of people are having problems these days because they know that there’s a hint of a problem with it, and the seller is probably promising, don’t worry, I’ll sort it out.
I’ll tell you something that happened about a decade ago. At that point was when we started acquiring land at the Lekki Free Trade Zone. Some clients in the UK needed land, and every single time we went to inspect at the Lekki Free Trade Zone, I would always go with the Surveyor from the Surveyor General’s Office. You know, my area of strength is due diligence. We always have to get to the very roots of the title. And every time we went for one inspection or the other, it was always like, oh, this land is acquired. Some are not even just acquired, some are already acquired and committed for a particular project. There was a particular one I went for, and it was a big real estate company in this Lekki Free TradeZone, 10 years ago and I went with the surveyor from the Surveyor General’s Office, and they charted the land and I was almost discouraged, and I decided, you know what, let me go with a real estate company that has already acquired something. They must have done their due diligence, you know, title document will be no issue. And we still went with the surveyor, we still did the charting, and the surveyor came back to say, well, it’s acquired. I was shocked. I called the CEO of the real estate company, and I said, did you do your due diligence? Are you aware that this land is acquired, that it’s not free? And he said, Madam, what exactly do you want? I told him, I said, I want properties for my client, but I can’t give them land that is already acquired, so I was calling to find out if you were aware. Some of them are aware, because the truth is, everybody’s blaming the government and the regulators. Yes, you can blame them for some, but for majority, no. Because if you go back to the master plan, the master plan for the coastal road has not really changed.
Finally, can you tell us more about yourself?
I’m Olamide Adeleye, a lawyer, recently appointed as Global President for the Women Achievers Africa, and recently given a global award in London in recognition of what the CSR arm of the company does. And what we do is we help to refurbish public school libraries with books and computers. Thank you.
