Babatunde Shonekan is the Senior partner at Babatunde Shonekan & Associates, a law firm and Managing Director of Admancon Properties, an estate agency company that specializes in the sales and leasing of high-end properties. With over 30 years of experience in both Law and Estate Agency, he recently talked about some issues in the industry in an interview with Castles Lifestyle.

What do you see as the most challenging trend in
estate agency today in Nigeria?

One of the challenges we are currently facing is that
of estate surveyors interfering with the business of lawyers. They have no rights drafting legal agreements between two or more parties. They are not legal practitioners. Their job is to do the valuation of properties to ascertain their current prices and leave the legal aspect to the lawyers.
They should treat the legal part of the business with
more respect and professionalism.

How do estate surveyors interfere with the business
of lawyers?
They usually act as lawyers in their transactions and draft legal or contractual agreements for their clients just to cut cost, which is wrong. For instance, the contractual agreement for a 5 bedroom apartment for a house can be different for a similar one due to factors such as period of lease, conditions
of the current lease and payment patterns.

How can this trend be reversed or changed?

The only way this can be changed is through the
media. There is the need to sensitize the general public on such trends. In most cases, people should
consult trusted lawyers of their own when they are
about to go into legal agreements in property because the market is a risky business that involves the due diligence of everyone involved. Doing things like this the right way can be used to check fraud and other similar “sharp practices”.

Source:
http://www.castlesweekly.com.ng/magazine/article/AGENCY%20PRACTICE%20/1471

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#Strongly agree