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Most African immigrants consider building a house back home a lifelong investment and culturally deemed fitting, welcoming and a fulfilling achievement. Many African immigrants are mostly discouraged by rip off stories from people they’ve entrusted their project in. The biggest problem being inability to terminate contracts in a friendly manner, no bargaining power and misplaced trust all leading to the unfulfilling dream of building a house.
As a home builder one of the more difficult task, you can greatly benefit from is finding home service providers such as architects, plumbers, electricians, and others to directly work on your home project and pay their wages directly. It is hard to sometimes trust your family relatives and friends to take charge of the whole project for you. In recent years, we hear stories of African immigrants who have lost their money by investing with friends and family they trusted to oversee their constructions work and pay the workers’ wages. Among some of the sad story was a Nigerian immigrant man living in the United States who had entrusted the building of his dream house in Nigeria to his children. His own family squandered all the money he had been sending for many years towards this project. They would send pictures of someone else’s building project to deceive him and collect more money. He was devastated to find out that he had been deceived for many years! ~Story by Mr. Mayowa Daniel, Building Contractor, Nigeria.
Despite the fact that many of our stories usually boil down to just a few shared reasons.
The largest problem immigrant faces while entrusting their family or friend with their home construction is that they don’t have the leverage they would have with an external contractor. This may encompass rework, negotiating prices or getting tough and intense when a due date approaches.
Other challenges include the emotional part of the close relationship gaps and how that can simply impact the ongoing work. You can get caught up in a considerable measure of feeling when there is conflict. Family member might take the audit of their poor performance personal due to their existing relationship. The external contractor would accept criticism to better get the work done with satisfactory conducts.
Now and again, home builders will tell you that relatives exploit being a piece of the family to request time off, miss due dates and delay your project that might result in additional expenses.
Musemiu Adeola, Co-founder of Afroconstruct said “the best bet for aspiring home builders is to recruit and outsource their home project to specialists in their respective field. Dealings should be contracted with those who are most qualified enough to help you oversee and complete your construction. Getting family involved might not be a good idea to get the best results.”
Also keep in mind that your privacy might be at risk. Your relatives might easily disclose your affairs with other family member you simply don’t want them to know about your ongoing construction in your home town.
AfroConstruct seeks to address all this in a professional manner hinged on integrity and transparency, by bringing an online marketplace where African immigrants with building projects in their respective homes can access, buy building materials from reliable local suppliers and connecting with trusted and professional artisans to work on their projects.
