Olowolafe: With Real Estate, We Are Building Generational Wealth
Isaac Jr Olowolafe is the President and CEO of Dream Maker Realty Inc, Canada – a real estate firm that has been in existence for over a decade. He is also the President of the Toronto Hub of the Nigerian Professionals and Business Network (NPBN). In an i
Well, the business environment in Canada has been great over the last eleven years and our company, Dream Makers Corporation, which is an umbrella, has grown rapidly giving birth to: Dream Maker Realty, Dream Funds Holding ( DFH), Dream Maker Management ( DMM) and most recently, Dream Maker Developments ( DMD).
So over the last eleven years, the business environment has been great and we have been studying real estate market, wealth management market, and other development markets and how manufacturing in the real estate works. That has tremendously helped us over the last ten years into an asset management firm working with investors, individuals, families and organizations.
The philosophy of the company is building generation of wealth using real estate as a tool. Growing up in an Italian area for almost sixteen years, the concept came within the community - I discovered that they were creating wealth - I mean generational wealth, using real estate as the tool.
When we started our company, one of the main aspects we focused on was education; that is educating our people hence using the tool to create multiple investment portfolio that would help them create wealth for their children’s children.
‘’ The giving that we do is part of the education that I spoke about. As our businesses grow, we try to give back to the society. The first institution we gave that to was University of Toronto where I graduated from. So the endowment donation was given to the university’s African studies department – the reason for that was coming from the continent and coming from Nigeria specifically, I knew that if I am going to work for an institution like UFT, so it naturally makes sense to give to an institution that is so much closer to us.
It would not only encour- age people to be interested in the programme, but also shed more light on the continent that has not been positively advertised in the GTA. So it was my pleasure to give good attention to the department which has, over the years, been underfunded unlike other programmes which are fully funded. The most recent one was Ryerson: the purpose for that endowment was to develop young entrepreneurs. So then, the institution was trying to create a programme that would focus on building young entrepreneurs, hence the need to collaborate with the university’s ideas to succeed.
The more businesses that we start within our community, the more jobs that we could create within our community and with that the more giving that will come within our community and that is how generational wealth creation works - its not necessarily money. It is just infrastructure, laying a foundation and it starts from education.
There are many plans on ground to re- integrate into the Nigerian market. About four years ago, I was in Nigeria for about a week and half. We used the opportunity to register our company, Dream Maker International Limited. The primary aim for creating that was for our corporation here to bring the fundamental practices that we’ve learned over the last ten years home to Nigeria; those fundamental practices involve collaborating with the lenders which are the banks, the citizens, the builders and the planner to create a plan that everyone wins and not just one party winning.
And that is what is working in the community market and that’s why community markets are still very helping and that being the reason why other people want to bring their investment to Canada. If I could bring that kind of concept to Nigeria, home buyers would be able to afford more homes and lenders will feel more comfortable giving money to the builders and builders will be able to structure deals with city planners to make sure everybody wins.
I hope and I pray that by the time I want to fully establish a business in Nigeria, there would have been some forms of a better system being created, I know nothing happens overnight. We thank God that last election went through peacefully and we have new leadership and we are hoping that new leadership would bring tangible changes into the country.
So in Nigeria, we are still working with individual and organisations that have already proved to us that they understand the business tactics that will be successful and I have seen a lot of that when I was there four years ago. We have realised that there are great entrepreneurs in Nigeria that we can work with. So the point is that, if we are able to get 25 per cent more in terms of energy, infrastructure, coupled with conducive environment, you can imagine what the youths would be able to do in the
country.
I was born in Ibadan and my parents have some stuffs there. My father is from Ekiti State. Some investments have been done in Ekiti State; some have also been done in Ondo State where my mum comes from. But for me, Lagos is the main area that I have been looking at – areas like Lagos, Ikeja and Lekki – I was impressed by what I have been reading about Eko Atlantic Investment Project. So basically, those are the types of developments that I want to be able to get involved in.
I am interested in the development of Hotel, residence development and we believe that with the type of structure that we have created in Canada, if we can do that kind of structure back home, we will get a lot of investors that will be on ground and purchasers will be able to look at our company as a trusted company that has been doing this type of development in Canada.
It is in different phases. On the development side, we have close to 300 million dollars on the go; on the brokerage side, we have transacted over a billion dollars in real estate; from the property management point of view, we are managing over 200 million dollars worth of real estate properties; from wealth management point of view, we have transacted over half a billion dollars worth of investment and we have been giving out yield based on joint venture transactions process of 20 per cent per year for investors’ capital.
There hasn’t been any direct contact for now. One or two investors have shown me the project, telling me it’s going to be a great investment opportunity. When I see that project, it reminds me of the development that is going on in Dubai. So it makes me proud to see that Nigeria has raised the bar when it comes to project development. But definitely from what I have heard, Nigerian developers or builders have not been that involved in it – most of the investors have been from other countries; of course there is nothing really bad about this, but it will be great to have a Nigerian builder being there – making names for themselves and putting out good product.
Yes, 100 percent. I think what has been stopping us from investing heavily in Nigeria has been political issues. The only problem has been the way things are structured. And I think one thing that the new government can do is to create a system that is friendly enough for investors, business owners outside of Nigeria to comfortably invest into their land. I think the government should utilize most of their energy to create that structure that will be okay hence increasing the money coming back into the system.
I think the first thing is knowing where the money is going, knowing their investment route. They quite know and understand that there are lots of opportunities in the energy sector, technology sector, health sector and with the population, then the market is sure for your investment. And I have always told individuals looking into Africa for investment that that Nigeria remains the best. When you look at the population of China, India and you look at the population of place like Nigeria, there is no reason why investments put into areas like energy or real estate, there is no way profits wouldn’t be made – substantially. But again, it still comes down to the system put in place to make the business environment conducive enough for investing business people.