“It took diligence and a whole lot of effort to win people’s trust to do business with us,” says Chudi Ubosi, reflecting on the early days of Ubosi Eleh & Co. Founded in 1991 with his partner Emeka Eleh, the estate surveying and valuation firm has now operated for 35 years — an uncommon run in a country where, as the founders note, most companies don’t survive beyond five years.
The firm started with just two partners and a secretary in a small office at 104, Awolowo Road in Ikeja, Lagos. Today it has branches in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Awka, Onitsha and Enugu, and well over 45 employees who have been with the company for more than a decade.
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Ubosi and Eleh knew each other long before they launched the business. They had shared ideas about real estate while still interning, and even tried a few other ventures that didn’t work. “But we always had it clear in our mind that real estate was going to be our core business,” Eleh said in an interview with reporters.
Before striking out on their own, they deliberately joined real estate firms to gain market training. The plan was not to work for too long. “That vision helped us to go into practice early enough,” he added. The approach they took was also different from many existing firms, which they described as overly conservative — locking phones when staff left the office, for instance.
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It set up with an open culture. The vision was to build a practice that could survive them — something like what Akintola Williams did for accounting in Nigeria. “Our model can be likened to Akintola Williams,” he said. “Our vision is to create a practice that can outlive both of us.”
Walking the streets of Lagos to hand out business cards
Breaking into the market was the hardest part. At the time, the field was dominated by big players like Knight Frank, Dosumu & Co, Jide Taiwo, and Diya Fatimilehin. The partners would leave the office each morning with 30 to 40 complimentary cards and not return until every card was given out.
They focused on banks — many of which are now defunct. The co-founder recalled waiting in the Marina car park after walking the streets, approaching men in nice suits to hand over a card. They also advertised heavily in the then-property pullout, which at its peak ran over 60 pages on a Monday.
“In those days, property sales were a secret business,” the co-founder said. “Today someone can tell you, ‘it’s my property, I can sell it if I want to.'” Phones were scarce. When the 090 lines arrived, they bought one immediately because they understood the importance of communication.
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Regulation gaps and the challenge of trust
The firm’s biggest challenge, according to the founders, is the lack of regulation in large parts of the real estate sector. Valuation — the area that requires professional licensing — remains their core revenue driver, accounting for 75 to 80 percent of income for a period. “For a long while, the valuation staff in our office are 60 to 70 percent of the entire staff,” he said.
Other areas like estate agency, leasing and sales are largely unregulated in Nigeria. “Anybody can do estate agency, and that is not what it is supposed to be,” Eleh said. That opens the door to quackery and makes it hard for trained professionals to compete on a level field.
Getting skilled staff is another ongoing problem. Unlike banks that can send new hires to a six-month training school, smaller firms have to train on the job. “It took diligence and a whole lot of effort to win people’s trust,” one co-founder said.
They also credit some of their inspiration to the way GTBank revolutionized banking when it emerged. “You learn a few things from how others run their business,” he said. “When GTBank came out, it turned things around. We learnt from their revolutionary approach.”
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The dead capital problem in Nigeria’s land market
One topic the partners are particularly vocal about is land titling. They argue that the government needs to give people legal title to the property they own. “Every land in this country is owned by somebody,” Ubosi said. “The only way you will know is when you enter the land and start doing something.”
Without title, land becomes what economists call dead capital — an asset that cannot be converted into cash. “If you see a man who owns 50 hectares of land, because he has no paper, there’s no way he can convert that asset to raise money for his business,” he explained. “He may be lacking N100,000, but he can’t get it because the asset is not convertible.”
A proper land reform process, he added, would not only unlock capital for individuals but also generate more property tax revenue for the government.
The firm’s longevity, for now, rests on a simple philosophy: “Everybody who walks into our office should leave happy, whether or not we did business with him,” Eleh said. Their anniversary motto for the year is “Built to Last.” Whether that holds in the face of regulatory gaps and market headwinds is still being tested — but 35 years is already an outlier in Nigerian business.