Anyone heard of this? Though IMHO, the claim is bogus, at least I am happy that a fellow NLer developed the website. We have chatted a few times as a matter of fact. I say kudos to him and I pray he got paid what he is worth and if not, that this publicity make demand for him sore so that he can make the money he deserves

http://odili.net/news/source/2008/dec/15/402.html
An Ireland-based Nigerian investment consultant, Mr. Victor Lamai, has introduced the nation's first online real estate market in Lagos.

According to him, the website, www.nethomesng.com, will make it possible for intending investors to view three dimensional pictures of various properties available for sale in cities such as Lagos, Dubai and London, and make a choice without having to leave the comfort of their homes.

Lamai said that part of the goals of the online real estate market was to provide a portal on the web for stakeholders in Nigeria to carry out transactions in real estate across the world.

Apart from this, he said that the website would also serve as a platform for the purpose of showcasing the quality of Nigerian architecture and the potential of the local real estate industry to the rest of the world.

nethomesng, he added, was inspired by the Google and Yahoo experience and would work in partnership with leading property companies in the United Kingdom, Middle East, Republic of Ireland and the rest of the European Union.

It will also showcases Nigerian properties, commercial buildings for sale or rent, virgin lands as well as hotels and allied services of the building industry.

The online real estate market, Lamai pointed out, was targeted at potential investors in real estate resident in Nigeria and overseas, especially Nigerians in the Diaspora, who might wish to acquire properties in the country without having to depend on intermediaries.

Lamai said, "Our target is the young upwardly mobile people, who in the main are computer literate business decision makers. Research has shown that those who use computers for private and business purposes are the ones driving the economy and having the most purchasing power all over the world. They are the buyers of new and commercial properties."

hmmm,  Yawa, thanks for the publicity, lol,
really i do hope to get more of this kind of job and also continue as the site admin.
but to me, nethomesng.com is Nigeria's first most serious property website.
The kind of facilities that has been put together both within Nigeria and outside will attest to this.
Sales Executives in all zones of the country and promo here and there.
I believe to you, Its soon going to be the first and the greatest.

cheers!!!

What about our very own Nairaland Properties?

hmm, just came back from the NL properties page, tis tight, BUT nethomesng.com is designed with a single focus on properties, hw abt the issue of pictures of properties and one-on-one interactionS with NIESV (The Nigerian Institution Of Estate Surveyors And Valuers)?

If i were you i wouldnt blow that trumpet too loud, you never know the folks at ip4properties.com might hear, then you'll have to concede theres better, just an observation

sitepath,

pepsi might taste better than coke but with good marketing, coke has managed to convince the world that they are the best. how? Marketing.

I monitor Nigerian news addictively and haven't heard of any real estate company that has claimed to be the first. Just reading that has made me skeptical of ip4properties. In other words, nethomes will probably get to critical mass much quicker than ip4, which is what matters in our web2.0 world.

***** WORD !!! ******* YAWA, gimme ur bank account, lemme pay in some money

no data,

every search returns no record found,

getting the site up is just 10% of the job, i hope the owners realize,

as a visitor i'll only return if there's something in offering, a site like this needs regular updates , new data, et al

Yawatide marketing is really a wonderful tool, but minus strategy and implementation its just hot air. That pepsi taste better than coke a lot of folks am sure would beg to differ (me? i dont like either! thank God for farouz!).
Ip4properties has a great strategy implemented; the result? PROPERTY LISTING ON THE SITE! which if am not wrong is the whole aim of the bleeding website in the first place. If you spend all your money on marketing (anyway the client na jandon, and the pound is still not doing too badly ) you'll make some noise, people come see an empty site; DO YOU THINK THEY'LL COME BACK? i wouldnt
When it comes to web biz, 2.0 or whatever there are three links:CONCEPT;STRATEGY;IMPLEMENTATION, learn from the silicon valley documented startups one doesent survive without the other!

I don't have to learn from silicon valley. I want silicon valley to rather come learn from Potiskum hills. Be original damn it!

Anyways, as I said before and will say now, it's all about marketing. Of course the flip side of the coin is that you back up your marketing with what you are actually marketing (I wouldn't exactly call that strategy ) otherwise you would be blowing hot air out where the sun doesn't shine.

So again, I will give them A+++ for marketing.

In other words, nethomes will probably get to critical mass much quicker than ip4, which is what matters in our web2.0 world.

@ Yawa: Ok, you get to critical mass quicker, let's even say 12 years before
others realize the potential of such a market, then others come in and do a better job
(like http://ip4properties.com/ for example, which has a better and more believable interface).

Marketing is important and kinda key, but in true web 2.0 nature, good content is king.
All the search queries I made returned blank, the visual elements are WRONG, all of them

By the way, I love your marketing intro, wink*

olushola, so let me sort of regurgitate wat i said earlier, albeit maybe in a different form:

Up until it was brought up, i never heard of ip4. I never heard of nethomes either until I saw it in an online newspaper. Now, content or no content, if you see something like that in the news, wouldn't that make you give them some sort of pass, even with little or no content. Remember, we aren't talking you and I hear but Bamidele and Okoro who probably only visit a cybercafe once a week at best and who probably don't have the money or resources (gen, etc) to afford them the ability to even watch news consistently.

My point again is: If ip4 is that good, then let them hit nethomes hard with a marketing campaign of their own. Again, and I stand corrected and I speak as someone who visits at least 8 Nigerian online newspapers a day for the past 3 years, I haven't seen anything on ip4 except this week on this board.

Theres really no point arguing about this stuff. This marketing thats so hyped up albiet when misplaced even an idiot can market! How? Just dole out the cash! About originality i think we should learn to crawl before we fly to the stars dont you agree? Understudying a successful concept, learning and even copying from what they did right and avoiding what they did wrong seems to make sense to me. Thats why i have no qualms understudying silicon valley, they've been at it long before us folks so why reinvent the wheel?
The bottom line lets keep our perspective unbiased. I may not have seen ip4properties in any major advert medium but i heard of them through "word of mouth" (which some people believe is a stronger form of advert by the way). If am satisfied they can deliver and i get what i want; guess whats gonna happen? i'll recommend them to the next chap who needs there service (probably you someday )
When it comes to internet startups in nigeria dolling out cash like theres no tomorrow on advertising campaign am sure a lot of netpreneurs will tell you is not the best strategy. Startup funding is scarce and i know a lot of guys who are scrapping cash together to make there net dreams come true without the almighty "MEDIA MARKETING BILL" .

sitepath,

If there is no point arguing, why are you continuing then?

By the way, I am reasoning, not arguing and yes, there is a difference.

Marketing takes different forms. Word of mouth is one of them. I however, never heard of ip4 b4 and as has been stated millions of times, am going by what i read in the news. Even after hearing about them, I never bothered going there. Why? For one, I have no need to. If by the time I want to buy some real estate, I go to nethomes (forever burnt into memory cos of the newspaper article) and there is nothing to my taste there at the time, then I will go to the next, in this case, ip4 based on this post. Simple.

@felifeli, I agree that doing real estate in Nigeria still has a long way to go, but starting right now shouldnt hurt anyone, with the right marketing you can make some money through ads (real estate ads pay a lot of money). I once thought of such an idea, but I was skeptic so I just set up a blog about home foreclosure in the US. foreclosuresupport..com

Man you really done a great job n that site, keep it up!

abeg make person come buy this domain name ekopropertiesng.com

That site might be great but I personally prefer www.westafricahousing.com

A pair of smart and hardworking young enterpreneurs put it together and I think the site is currently being advertised on rythm 93.7. I am not sure

What I like about this site is that they are the most affordable, but they still give you great services. You have to visit the site to see what I mean

coolscotty,

Call me a spoiler but I browse exclusively with FF and noticed that there is horizontal scroll, courtesy of the username/password boxes that extend beyond the container. When I see something like that, it turns me off, no matter how good the functionality of the site is. It wreaks of unprofessionalism (is this a word? ). How hard would it have been for those guys to test the site properly before launching?

Also, the house in the banner, it doesn't represent the layout of any house anywhere in West Africa.

Again, call me a spoiler and someone with bad belle but certain things either turn me on or off completely and just those 2 items (of many) have turned me off the site you showed us, no matter how good the listings might be.

1,000 and more Nigerians knows if they can just get those properties on the net in pictures they would be making money, but 2,000 and more nigerians have dreamt of this and went out to start the project and met brick wall. Realtors aren't ready to point to where those buildings are, so for now you only make do with listings which are not very encouraging to buyers.
The so called sites you have on the net are empty sites but overadvertised.
Nigerian real estate market is ripe for it but the fear of been sidelined on the deal will not allow an average agent to direct you to the house for pictures to be taken, so we only have to wait until when they can be more receptive.
But I have an idea, advertise on real estate newspapers for developers, connect to the few ones you know and let them connect you to their friends, then you can start from there. In otherwords bypass real estate agents. CHIKENA!

@dnative,
Your post is realy interesting, Actually, the main target of this website is to reach the property owners themselves.
Where they can personally sell their properties themselves and save the economy by sidelining some dubious characters in the name of Agents.
It brings transparency into play.

but i wonder why Seun had to move this thread to bots.

Having just visited the so-called Nigeria's 1st online Real Estate Market website- nethomesng.com,  i have come away with the impression that it's owners must be living in cloud cockoo land.

Firstly the home page is no better than tens of other nigerian based property web sites, the all too pervasive green background gives the impression it was designed for a nigerian govt parastatal, and on a more serious note i find it unprofessional for the site owners not to provide any response to most of the searches one makes. 

The only apparent success i made was though a link to their 52 properties available online, it was filled with some astonishing falsies, e.g  a property on Aba Road in Port Harcourt marketed at 3M Naira was an apparent lift from an MLS property listing from somewhere in southern US .

Another property in Shogunle, Idumota Mushin LGA in Lagos is another one lifted from a property magazine or listing from abroad. The rest of the available properties look like derelict properties awaiting re-possession located in backwater places like doncaster and st helen in the UK. why would decent hard working nigerians be intrested in buying such low quality properties.

U guyz know why i always appreciate being a Nigerian? coz most of us will never use our brains to think up something probably new and start it off, rather. we hang around the corner, peeping into people's business and try to see the flaws in em and put it to their faces, unfortunately, u aint pissing the person off, u only are pissing yourself off and cursing coz u r mad at urself for not thinking abt this earlier than the perzon.

Another reason why i like being a Nigerian, We do not encourage people who we think have dedicated their time to bring something up, back em up and see to the success of it even if we aint gona get a dime from em.

No wonders why there are too many yahoo peeps out there, coz bad mouths wont let em start somfink and stay with it.

========== PROUDLY NIGERIAN ======== You guyz need to have a rethink.

what a very unrealistic site. The properties there are not even Nigerian what so ever!

I smell either laziness on the part of the site owners or better still fraud!

You dont advertise other people's properties and use pictures in Oklahoma or somewhere in the bayou as the picture description. Thats very wrong and misleading.

Go and do your homework and when you have something more concrete to present then show the world not this!

A go chop your $ even kobo you nogo see. This is 419 fraud at best. Don't you guys get it. yawa-ti-de & bug24 are the same person. One is wearing a mask the other one is playing hide and seek. But this is my last warning to you bug24 or whatever yawa-ti-de you are call or else I will personally deal with you accordingly.

Well, we're only doing our job. lawyer and I have made it our sole responsibility to fight crime on this properties forum. But anyway, I still smell a dead fish and I must surely find out where the odor is coming from.

ajileko,
just like dnative said, Please thread softly. Make enquiries before u raise alarm aight?
i bet he already explained where this thread originated. Were u a webmaster, i wulda asked you to go do a WHOIS.
I think i will need to call yawatide's attention to this thread right away.
ajileko is giving the main NL folks names, (this guy is very aggressive).

WELL, LEMME PUT THIS THIS WAY, maybe it will help those raising issues abt the nethomesng.com

This is an entirely new website, launched late 2008.
at the moment, calls are still going out to credible estate agencies to get their properties online on the site, which accounts for the low content (property-wise) on the site, i guess u guyz can do better than criticize, but to join hands with others who are faster than you in thoughts to make something AT LEAST work in Nigeria. LETS JUST PUT SENTIMENTS ASIDE FOR ONCE.

Well, finding out how and where to invest in real estate from the experts is very necessary. There are now numerous options available for investing in real estate.