An insider view of the inflamed real estate sector
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Messele Haile (Ph.D.) is a civil engineer by profession who is a shareholder and general manager of a local real estate company called Country Club Developers (CDC).
Mesele is also owner of the local architectural firm, MH Designs, and a lecturer at the Ethiopian Institute of Engineering and Building Construction (EiBC). Given the recent controversy regarding the real estate industry, Birhanu Fikade of The Reporter sat down with Messele for an interview. Excerpts:
Based on your experience in the real estate and construction sector, both academic and practical, how do you see the real estate business in Ethiopia at the moment and its journey so far?
When we speak of real estate as an industry, first of all, it is important to make a distinction between the real estate industry, which is business of building office facilities and commercial centers, and those focused on residential houses. As far as the office buildings are concerned, we need not spend too much time discussing them, maybe apart from the skyrocketing rental prices, at this time. Rather, the residential housing arm of the real estate sector might be more interesting to talk about. In my opinion, the first sign of modern real estate work in Ethiopia is seen in what is now called “Bole Homes‚ neighborhood in the capital. These housing units were built by a foreign company, if I can recall correctly, and that is what could be taken as the earliest emergence of the real estate business in Ethiopia. Still, if you look at the matter after the emergence of the sector after the fall of the Derg, Ayat is the first large-scale real estate developer in recent times. Issues of delay and customers complaints notwithstanding, I think that Ayat has played an important role in the sector by opening up a number of job opportunities and helping many people to become home owners. Since then, however, a lot of local firms, as many as 100, joined this industry. According to our own assessment, out of this 100 newly incorporated real estate firms, not more than 10 are actively working. Hence I take the real estate industry in Ethiopia as one that is at its early stage of development.
