Getting a property to buy or let is not as easy as it seems even though real estate developments are being put up in very city day and night. Searching for house needs one to go through property dealers or agents who might not be trustworthy as they appear, and some of them have run-down properties which can’t even be rented out.
Nigeria’s Vamtopia wants to solve this problem.
Samuel Afolaranmi the founder and CEO of Vamtopia says he saw the need in people acquiring properties and renting places easily. The companies that were on ground only listed properties, making it hard for viewers as they had to go through agents which is mostly tedious, time consuming and sometimes can also be plagued with fraud given the level of fraudulent activities in the Nigerian real estate sector.
“This made us thinking of a plan whereby the buyer only needs to choose a place he or she wants, then we help them undergo the process of getting the place. This would eliminate the time spent or sorting through and making contacts with the agents, the stress in getting their dream property and will also bring fraudulent activities to their bearable minimum,” Afolaranmi told TechMoran.
Buyers or tenants get on the site, browse through the website for their preferred property, after finding it they they submit it as a request to the firm then it goes ahead helping them piece together their dream property.”Once we get them together, we take them on visitation to the property and once they are interested in going forward with the deal, they pay us and we help them get the property and all documents all done with no stress on their part.
Our way of doing things “Find, Select property, Pay and Move in” – We take care of the technicalities in between,”Afolaranmi adds.
Currently the uphill task is signing up as many properties as possible as well as working to gain some market share against the competition. Some of the online real estate marketplace competitors include Rocket Internet’s Lamudi.com.ng, One Africa Media’s PrivateProperty.ng, Spark-backed ToLet.ng and RentNowNow.com among others. Users can also find properties on OLX.
Vamtopia’s advantage is the personal relationship it wants to build with the property buyers or tenants, something ToLet also has.
