For many people across Africa, real estate acquisition has become a challenging decision with rampant scams and under-dealings bedeviling the sector, in a continent where the largest portion of land does not have verifiable title documents.

Buying land or any other form of real estate asset in Africa, is an arduous task as governments have failed curb dishonest and fraudulent property dealings. This exposes genuine investors to fraud, and end up losing their money.

But Nigeria-based proptech startup, HouseAfrica is steadily changing this narrative using a first-of-its-kind platform. The startup is leveraging on blockchain technology to ensure genuine prospective investors in real estate escape the dangerous traps in the sector.

Founded in 2018, HouseAfrica uses technology to make it easier for buyers to verify the authenticity of the land they invest in and also get a blockchain-powered proof of allocation of the land when they purchase it.

How it Works

(Ndifreke Ikokpu, co-founder of HouseAfrica, showing Systemap on his smartphone during interview)

Co-founder and COO Ndifreke Ikokpu tells NODO News that the platform is a decentralized real estate and rental ecosystem that aims to develop quality affordable housing and open the African property market to both local and global investors.

“On our platform, we basically provide a private digital registry-like solution to property buyers. We afford the buyer an opportunity to access property registries, which are essential for keeping data on properties, sales, transactions and all other prerequisites and most importantly, ownership,” Ikokpu, who was also the co-owner of crypto exchange Bitpaya says. “We provide real estate developers with a solution through which they can digitize all their processes, which had hitherto been done manually.”

Through its Systemap platform, HouseAfrica helps first-time real estate buyers to select, verify, and pay for estate plots online. Its blockchain capabilities support a secure land registry, and alongside a map of the locality, digitizes sitemaps for real estate projects.

It strives to address the issues surrounding land ownership such as issuance of duplicate land titles, illegal sales, as well as low access to mortgages. HouseAfrica provides an immutable ledger alongside a visual map reference, that protects the authenticity of land titles, using blockchain.

The idea is to safely keep property data and protect land transaction information, and to be able to access that data when selling the property. Through the platform, HouseAfrica captures all the requisite records to allow property developers, land agents, and buyers to access this information whenever they need it.

“Even the state registries do not have the micro records of land ownership. Though they may have access to the records of the developers,” Ikokpu says.

The Platform Helps Users to Make Quick Decisions

Developers, he says, can also use the blockchain platform as a sales tool since it allows prospective buyers to view the properties on the map, check the location in which the property is, and look at proximities or other key places around the area where this project is built, all which help them make quicker decisions.
Ikokpu is a graduate of material engineering from the Federal University of Owerri.

With blockchain technology, a decentralized booking system gives each user in the network the capability to view the entire database with all information chains or excerpts from it. And since the data stored in a blockchain is immediately encrypted, it is incorruptible and remains available to every network participant.

This data is immutable and remains the same for all participants. Data recovery is also easy as the entire transaction history can be retrieved from any network node within the blockchain.

This explains why it is a critical tool in real estate and land transactions, given the many land cases that arise across the African continent.

HouseAfrica is Already Making Impact in Nigeria

(Residential area of Abuja, Nigeria / Photo by Unsplash)

HouseAfrica, which just recently secured a $400,000 funding to upscale its operations and deepen its tech capabilities, works with real estate agents, property buyers and developers.

It currently has 360+ properties allocated through its platform in the west African country; mainly in Lagos, Awka, Port Harcourt and Abuja, as well as several other small towns. It has more than 100 estate developers using the platform.

“In terms of transaction volumes, we have seen $1.8 million in value of transactions conducted in the past few months,” Ikokpu says. “Just two weeks ago, we activated the payment option in which we partner with Nigeria’s banks for use of a virtual account system.”

The virtual account allows buyers to pay the developers in installments even when they cannot access funding or lending from banks. The system is able to track payments, reconcile the accounts, and inform the customer when to make the next payment. It is in its final stages of development but will be integrated into the platform’s network before end of April.

The startup has also partnered with the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) to help it up scale further amid its plans to expand to other African countries like Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Angola.

$900 Billion Worth of Dead Capital in Residential Real Estate

Nigeria’s current real estate industry is worth more than $300 billion. But the unexplored real estate potential is worth $900 billion according to a PWC report, which is more than double the country’s GDP of $440 billion. “The high value real estate market segment holds between $230 billion and $750 billion of value, while the middle market carries between $60 billion and $170 billion in value. Approximately 95% of household dwellings in Nigeria have no title or a contestable title,” the report states (pdf).

HouseAfrica prioritizes to completely onboard at least 5% of property developers in Nigeria using the platform in the near future. It also seeks to promote the use of the platform in the country.

“The land problem is a big one in Africa. We don’t have a proper registry in the continent that people can make reference to. It’s actually much easier for me to be verified and buy land in the US that it is here in Nigeria,” says Ikokpu. “Our biggest problem is that we have no property data. People can not make reference of property data.”

But with more adoption of blockchain-powered tech systems, these snags can be eliminated by keeping land data and property registries tamper-proof.

-Edited by Shigeru Sato