Defining Household Income today, comes with a lot of disparities and school of thought as revealed in a number of reports from Africa Development Bank and Economic Intelligence Unit. Social strata that exists in Nigeria has its own peculiarity for instance some quarters have classified middle income class as those that earns average monthly income of NGN75,000-100,000 others put it 152,000 and above.
Upper & Upper-Middle Household Income are the most heterogeneous as compared with Middle & Lower class, Upper/Middle includes entrepreneurs of different class like the Small but growing businesses SBGB owners, Senior Managers & E-Class Executives, Directors/Founders, top politicians and heads of MDA’s.
Arguably Nigeria boasts of over 50 blue-chip firms operating in Lagos. These set of firms operate a globally competitive payroll, middle managers take-home ranges between N500,000 and N1.2m. The combination of these blue-chip firms employs at least 35% of (the 1.2m population that belongs to the upper & upper-middle household numbers that form part of the 3.8m household in Lagos) a workforce population that works daily in Lagos, which is put at over 420,000 workforces. The remaining population in this bracket 75% of (1.2m) people falls either within a self-employment, entrepreneur. Small but growing business owners, captain of industries/serial entrepreneur, facilities & equipment vendors, Suppliers/Import & Exporters at different bulk market, Int’l Trade Fair, Independent building contractors & Real Estate Expert, Architect and Engineers, Industrial Farmers, Manufacturers or Craftsman and woman that makes a least of N10m total revenue quarterly.
A high number of upper middle household live in leased/rented accommodation (70%) with an average household size of 3.7 people. The average number of children in each household is 2 (excluding those away at school) vs a national average that is closer to 4; larger families are more common in rural areas. Nearly half of the upper-middle have no immediate plan to move to a new house, 18% are planning to move to a newly completed self-owned apartment, others have desire to own a house or property but do not have plans or don’t really have know-how to go about this and those who have seen or heard about a number of real estate plans have not yet made a final buying decision.
The average number of cars per upper-middle-class household is 1.9 (around one third of upper-middle-class Nigerians have a car that is less than five years old); 60% upper-middle of homes have two cars. Car ownership remains a social symbol and prestige, among this class.
Nigerian Upper household invest largely in estates/assets, Oil & Gas, Equity/Share/Bond, Manufacturing, International Trading and/with future re-investment plans while the upper-middle class have a good saving culture, they care little about the deposit rate and don’t expects to borrow from a bank. If they had the funds, they would rather invest in land/or completed property than shares or bonds. Most do not have mortgages (which represent approximately 1% of GDP) or credit cards, though many expect to apply for the latter.
Strategic marketing of real estate investment that is targeted at the upper-middle household in Lagos, requires both online & offline location-marketing effort. This would eliminate waste in circulation and afford accurate visibility for prospective brands proactively. E.g a Facebook, twitter, Search Engine should be narrowed into all aforementioned location where this household are concentrated.
In 2016, only 26% of people used the services of a real estate agent. This year, the number will reduce further because of the growing (number of digital native young successful captains of industries, senior executives with top blue-chip firms and entrepreneur) population. They are tech savvy, urban and conduct their own research before making a rent or real estate investment decision.
Social affinity and extra-curricular places, that falls in these locations can also afford networking or where need be destination/hotspot co-branding for prospective realty brands.
These household class are frequent users of mobile taxes such as Uber, Taxify, etc. within and out of the locations mentioned above, during the 5 working days and weekends, an alliance that affords an experiential marketing with this modern taxi operator can be a sales Growth trajectory.
Advert agencies designing the copies and motion pictures for realty products in this segment may need be sure of the most effective channel and social language to use by looking deeper into the above insights and understanding the pain points and concerns of this segment, and their behavioral patterns continuously to keep building the brand. This segment of household are well learned people and rarely make impulse decisions on real estates, rather an informed or referral and thought led decisions.
The Graph result indicates a relatively low rate of residency within the Lagos state housing market.