 Property and property investments are one of the most important things when we are talking shelter, which is a basic need to every human. Tonight, we are talking sustainable residential properties, and this is going to be a very interesting conversation. Welcome to the Private Property Podcast. My name is Tumi. Let's unpack. My guest tonight is the founder of Bono Property Investments, and he's going to be taking us through the challenges that they have had, the ups and the downs of starting a property investment organization. His name is Mulalo Chideh Mah. Mulalo, good evening, and thank you so much for joining us. Good evening. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. Yeah, in Chivenda, we say in Dimadeguana, right? Yes, in Dimadeguana. Abu, thank you so much. Let's jump straight into our conversation tonight and talk Bono Property Investments. What do you do, and how exactly do you contribute to sustainable residential properties? Bono Property Investments, our main focus is development, property development. This is the company that was founded in 2018. I'm the co-founder, together with my partner, who is also my wife, Petrushia Chitemo. We started this journey in 2018 together and the reason for starting this was to just play a role or contribute in community development. The reason how it came, there was a day where I was just reading an article about the shortage of student accommodation and the newspaper, and then I took that to my wife and we discussed about it. She said, maybe it is time we start our own business because I can see there is a need on the side of student accommodation. For me, it was easy because I grown up in a built environment where my parents were contractors. So I learned how to do building when I was very young. So that's how it became easy even when we saw this opportunity to say, let's start this, and then together with my wife, we started by purchasing one house where we let in some students. I think the first one was 11 students and then we agree on purchasing a house each and every year where we keep on buying, buying, and then letting student in. Sure. No, thank you so much for that. And let's talk about what informed the segmentation that you currently have in terms of the projects that you run. As you said, you have student accommodation, but you also have rental accommodation and are giving provision or allowing people now to have access to affordable housing. What informed that decision? I'm hearing you're talking about the student accommodation specifically. At what point did you now decide, let's now add this residential and rental property. I can say the rental was driven back when I started working. My first rental house was in Pulukwami. What happened there? It was my first job, I got a job and then because I was already in the building environment with my father, I bought a house, but immediately after buying a house, I got a job which was in me to go out of the country. Then I asked people to stay in my house. And then while they're staying in my house, they found some tenants. Then that was the beginning of providing rental apartments. And since then, we have been doing that. When we come to Jobek, we had a flat that we were renting people. And then since then, the interest of rental keep on growing and growing and growing until when we saw the gap of student accommodation. And then through then, we attend some courses where we now start learning about the different strategies on providing the accommodation. That's where we decided to have different roles where we even look at affordable housing. Sure. And a lot of people start like that. A lot of people start their property journey very small and when they were doing it as something we call a side hustle. And now it becomes a fully-fledged business. What advice would you give to somebody who is now transitioning or is in the point of transitioning from becoming something that they did as a side hustle to it becoming a formal legitimized business? The advice I can give is that whether you are treating as a side hustle, you need to make sure that you are doing things properly. One thing that was a secret between me and my partner is from the beginning, what we were doing, we will have a structure that we will buy a house using a company, we form a formal company and then we will do all that is necessary. We'll have an accountant who will check our books, we'll have everything in order. So by the time we want to say we want to buy a bigger property or another property, because we have a good trend, we have everything in order. It was easy for the bank to consider us as a property people even though we were still in time at our work. I resigned full-time from my work in 2020 whereas my work just resigned last year. But our company has been there. We have been trading and working on that company. So my advice is that whether it's small or not, just make sure that you follow the rules, you do it accordingly. And you respect one that was good is whatever money we're generating because we have this bigger vision, we had to keep it and we were not using it to sustain our life. But the time decided to grow. My company was already having some money there and then it has a good financial standing also. It meant so. Let's talk a little bit more about the challenges that you're facing in the property space. That are unique of course to each and every single person and to each and every single portfolio manager or portfolio investor or even somebody who's coming in or who's been in the property industry for a while. What are some of those challenges that you faced and that you've curved or even surmounted that you could ascribe as lessons learned? The challenges, there are quite many just like any other industry, there is a lot of challenges. As we were transitioning from buying, we encounter a lot of challenges when we say we are now starting to develop because what we have done now, we said, yes, we have been renting, renting, but we want a bigger building. That's why in 2018, we decided to start applying for funds. And then in 2019, it was end of the year, we were granted a loan to build a 60 million project, which is a bigger student accommodation, which can accommodate about 376 students. The challenges there was from the beginning, because the years I had a little bit knowledge of construction, but there were a lot of things that I want encounter from. You need to understand the rules of construction what needs to be done in terms of the plan, what approval are necessary. I remember one of the unique one was the one for EIA. So we were not aware about it. And then as we were starting to build, one of our friend asked me about it, he said, did you check if your area is exempted for EIA? And I was not aware. Luckily enough, when we check our area, we were a little bit less than one hectare, which gave us a chance to be exempted. We applied for an exemption and it was done. Quickly within a month, it was done and we were not stopped. And what I've realized, if we were not in an area where it is exempted, we're supposed to be stopped and go and do the whole EIA, which can take a year or two. So we were the lucky. So from there, whenever I go to a new project, I make sure that it's flying in all the things before I can start laying the brick because that can be a very big problem there. It's a lot of projects that have been stopped because of that. Some of the challenges might be you buy the land without checking the availability of bulk services. You go and apply. When you are about to start building or when you send your plan for approval, they told you that there is not enough electricity or water in the area and then you start with the land. You cannot do anything on it. And there are challenges like also the communities. When you go to an area, when you want to start, people always feel like they need to, all of them, they need to get employment. They need to benefit the project. There are issues where people will tell you they need 30% of the project. So one need to be in a position when you can engage the people and talk to them. Just to give you an example, when we were building this, we had the issue for the community where they wanted the 30% also. And then the way we saw that was to say, no problem, we work with you and then we're supposed to build the 11 blocks. And then we talked to the main contractor to say, okay, there should be some blocks. We should be built by the community. And they see the community and they select the builder from the locker and they give them the 30% share where they should be. And because of that, it makes the process run smoothly. Really does sound like sustainable residential day because we are putting these into the community. So we need to ensure that we are integrating well. You spoke a little bit about the EIA earlier on. Could you just explain what the EIA is? For somebody who's watching us today and doesn't really understand what it is. It's an environmental assessment management. So normally what they will do, the environmental people, they will come and assess your area. If it's not within the, they have a categories where they said, let's say you have a stream or you have a wetland, they will categorize to say, this is a no-go area. You cannot build on this area. If you are building here, this is what you should do. They will give you some demarcation to say, if there's a stream or wetland, you cannot build less than 50 meters closer to it or you cannot do this and that. And this area are already demarcated with the department. So you put that in consideration when you go because we will find people go just that building. And then the next thing is the area which is demarcated or another thing, it might be zoned for something else. And then you go and buy it from somebody. When you go and then you find that that area is not allowed, you are not allowed to build at a certain density. If I said I need to build a three-storey house and then you find that the area is zoned only for farming. So it means that you need to go start by rezoning and all those stuff. So that environmental impact assessment, including the zoning and all those things, those are the challenges. So they think that one need to make sure that you understand fully before you can buy, even purchase the land. Sure, thank you so much for that. Very, very informative. Let's talk about what we should look forward for in terms of bono and property investments. What are some of the projects that you are looking to go into now? Are you thinking or even considering going into commercial properties or any other properties, types that you would consider going into in the future? Our focus normally is on residential. We haven't thought about a convention. And what we should do now is to go around instead of focusing on the hunting. Because at the moment, our footprint is only hunting. But we are now looking around. For instance, we are looking around Whitbank. We have some properties that we are looking around. We are looking into Bonbella site also. We are looking into Pochette Strom. There are areas where we are targeting, where we want to do affordable housing plus the just middle class to high level apartments for rent. Thank you so much for that, Malalo. And we will really be looking forward to some of the things that you are going to be doing as bono property investments. Thank you so much for joining us tonight and sharing the insights that you have shared with us. We really, really appreciate it. Have a good night. Thank you very much. That was good. Thank you. And that's about it for our episode tonight, where we are talking sustainable residential properties, specifically looking at residential properties as well as student accommodation. We had Mr. Malalo Chidema from Bono Property Investments. Thank you also to you for staying right till the end of the episode. Also do remember to follow us on all social media platforms and stay tuned to Private Property Podcast. My name is Dume. Have a good night.