If you really want to buy a house or land and you have been dreaming of how best you can achieve this onerous task, then you have to read this and follow it to the book.

1. Buying a land or property is the most cumbersome and burdensome issue to most prospective buyers in Nigeria more especially Lagos. There are too many horror stories involved and they include:

a. Scammers and people who claim to own land but turn out to be 419ers or omonile
b. Dealing with difficult and corrupt and dishonest Estate agents
c. Greedy lawyers and fraudulent land registry government officials
d. Lack of a proper understanding on the fees and taxes to be paid when buying a land or property
e. Fear of engaging a professional or responsible person who you can trust to carry out the buying and selling process on your behalf
f. Fear of a potential law suit already occurring on that land that has been so sweetly advertised as very good land free from all wahala
g. Fear that the documents given to you are not valid enough or complete enough
h. Fear that the land it’s self is not properly gazetted or has not been registered in the land registry
i. Whether the land your buying is not under a mortgage or is ear marked for government use or destruction.

In fact there are so many reasons people have for going into a land purchase process in a very morbid and gloomy state of fear and are extremely skeptical about the whole process.

Well now these are the few secrets you should know when buying a property and what you should do from scratch to the end of the sale.

1. Budget, Budget and Budget:

Always set out your preferred budget before you even attempt to buy or purchase your property This is the number one problem prospective purchaser’s encounter before they involve themselves with a property purchase.

I have encountered people who tell me they have one million naira as their set budget and end up spending up to N5 million  to buy a land and obtain a C/O. It boils down from the mundane to the ridiculous. You set your budget for N1million and you end up seeing a land sweetly advertised as N1.5 million in a strategic place and you say you can squeeze out N500, 000. That N500, 000 is just the tip of the iceberg. You still have to pay 10% of the Estate Agent’s fees and 10% of the legal fees which has jumped to an extra N1 million naira that is not included in the budget.

You still have to pay the surveyor who is going to map out the area, you still have to pay for the required search on that land, you still have to pay the required government fees and taxes and probably if you bought it in a place where the community is traditionally inclined, you have to settle the restless community and youths so that you can build on it peacefully and so on and so forth.

Bottom line here is that you must have a realistic budget before you even attempt to dream of owning a land unless, your account would jump into red faster than you can say “How come? Wetin Happen? How my money disappear like this”.

E.g if you have N1 million in all totality and you do not intend to go over board and incur an over draft, you should just pencil the fact that the property you intend to buy does not exceed N250,000 to N500,000 at most unless you could end up miscalculating so many things.

From that N500,000 remaining, do the math and remove 10% of that amount for the estate agent and 10% for the lawyer jejely, leaving you with N400,000. With that N400,000, you can afford to pay the surveyor, settle the community and register your c/o with the government conviently. With this kind of prudent planning, then your on your way to owning your dream home.

Also know that with a budget like N1million, do not expect to buy a land in ikoyi, lekki or magodo. There are other places like ikorodu, ejigbo, eleko etc that fall within your budget. Always ask a property speculator, estate agent or lawyer to give you a valid price check on properties in an area before you buy one.

Dont Rush your purchase. Always take your time. Its not how long but how well. Remember that:



2. Search, Research and Search Again:

This to me is the ultimate problem people have when buying a land and this is the reason they always 95% of the time enter problems or trouble with the government or with a third party over that land.

Whenever you see a land or property you want to buy, don’t get too jumpy over it because that land has probably been on the market for almost 6 months or more and even if you don’t buy it, you will get another one. Maybe not in the exact place or location but you would buy another one definitely but before you attempt to even dream of buying it, you have to do a search on that property.

A search is a legal way of knowing whether that property is free from wahala or whether somebody has bought it before and your just buying another person’s property again or whether government has not approved it or it has plans for it or maybe it is under a pipeline or government has planned to use that land in the year 2013 and you don’t know.

The way to achieve this is by engaging a lawyer to do a valid search on it. Personally I don’t just do one search, I do a minimum of 2 searches

These 2 include:

a. Searching the land registry at Alausa to know whether that property or land is free from wahala or encumbrance. If the property has a C/o before, I make sure the land registry gives me a certified true copy also known as a C.T.C of that land to serve as evidence. In a C.T.C, it will state when the property was first registered. Normally a good property or land should have at least 40 years history to show how the property has passed down over the years.

The C.T.C will also show whether the land has been used for a mortgage before and whether that land is free from that mortgage, if not, it will still reflect that the land is under mortgage.

Also the C.T.C will also show whether it has government approval or not.

If the property is not documented as one with a C/O and it is a family land, the search will require a Land Information Report. This land information report will show that such a land exists and which family has a right to own the land including the required survey map from the government.

b. The second kind of search I do after all these, is to go to either Ikeja High court or Igbosere High court at Lagos Island to do a court search. To me this is the most important search because the land registry search can show that the land has no wahala and its free from government acquisition but it would not show whether 2 or 3 people or families are fighting over that land and that land matter is in court.

The bad thing about buying a land that is under a law suit is that as long as you have paid money for that land, you may never recover that money for years due to an injunction to prevent all parties claiming that land till the matter has been settled in probably 22 years time. A famous case involving Oshodi V Oshodi comes to mind. The case took almost 20 years before the court awarded it to one party. All through these years, the true owners couldn’t sell or allocate lands legally to anyone and most of the parties to the suit died in between without enjoying the fruit of their labour.

Please don’t fall into that category for no reason what so ever. Once you rush to buy a house or land and you don’t exercise patience to know the outcome of that search, then you have no one but your self to blame.

I have heard people complain that that how can they pay N50,000 for a common search. I just laugh and shake my head because that N50,000 is your lottery jackpot fee. If the search turns out successful and there are no worries in it, then you could be a proud Nigerian Home owner. If you choose to ignore it or by-pass the process and go for jankara search to shave off money, trust me, when the wahala comes you can't stomach,,your children will swear profusely at you.

Remember Search is the key to your survival and happiness. Even if you don’t have the will to do it, abeg cover eye and do it. If you do a valid 2 way search, you will realize that 95% of landed problems would be eliminated.


3. Real estate Agent, Negotiating and tracking the owner:

Now that you have done your budget successfully and you have done the search for that land you intend to buy, then your already half-way to a successful transaction.
The next thing is to know who your contacting to do your transaction for you. At this stage, most people always involve or contact relatives or paddy paddy to do their transanctions on their behalf. To me this is a major red flag and your just gambling with your money.

I can not stress enough why you should always contact a property lawyer you trust to handle these things for you. A property lawyer knows the ins and out of this business and would see potential booby traps that the naked eye cannot see when it comes to land transactions.

What your paddy or relative is interested in is, is his commission for the sale of that land and that’s all. All the legal documents, searches, contacting the right surveyor, negotiating with the agent or direct owner and so on are out of the expertise of that relative or paddy.

These are the major things that go on after the search or even before the search in most situations.

a. He would look at various properties in the market and evaluate their current worth.

E.g if you say you need a land in Lekki and your budget is N10million for the land alone, he would look at all the potential lands in lekki and determine which one makes more sense in respect of:

1. The location
2. The size per square meters
3. the amount you would pay to government per square meters
4. The likely hood of if that land is under government control or family control
5. The chances that the property would be sold at a lesser price
6. the chances that he can negotiate the agency fees
7. The chances that the land has proper documentation
8. The chances that the land is allocated for either residential or commercial areas
9. The chances that the property is not embroiled in a legal suit

and so many other things filtering in his mind. After this, he writes an official letter of offer to purchase the land to the estate agent or direct owner in charge. This letter of  Interest provides for salient issues to be trashed out immediately such as the size of the property, the kind of title or documents the land has, the asking price, the agency fee and other questions.

The estate agent or a host of agents at this juncture send their respective bulletins or property listings elucidating the various benefits of purchasing their lands or properties and don’t worry, if you were only interested in one, you will be surprised to see more than 14 various lands in good locations with good offers for that property.

Once the lawyer choses or selects a few that fall within the client’s budget or specification, he then makes a formal contact with the agent and asks for an inspection of the properties physically to know whether it exists and know what it looks like. Normally it is good to carry along a registered surveyor to check things out yourself and do a visual calculation of the square meters because most agents might tell you the place is 800 square meters but on getting there, its not more than 400 meters and once you pay for it, your doomed.

If he finally settles for one, then he writes a letter of a counter offer and probably proposes to buy it for N7million instead. Sometimes these properties are major attractions and the agent might stick to their original offer of N10million but if the property has been on the market for a long time, the chances of negotiating a lower fee might be a success.

Factors that affect negotiation for a lesser fee includes:
1. Agent lying that the land is 800m2 but it is 600 m2 on investigation
2. The land not having enough documents
3. The land having very few documents that would require the new owner to spend money to obtain a C/O
4. The land not in a highly attractive place for development
5. The agency fees being too high

After all this, the lawyer now asks to see the direct owner or family involved. It is very important to know who is selling this property directly to you unless you could be in big soup tomorrow. I have experienced agents taking me to fake people posing as the true owners and until I did my own special and private investigation, I could have sworn they were the true owners.

The reason for finding the owner is to inspect the original documents in possession of the owner who intends to sell the property. This inspection requires an eagle eyed individual unless you could be holding a worthless piece of paper after sale. The owner also performs another duty, whereby he signs the purchase receipt and deed of assignment personally or on behalf of a family.

Family lands are more difficult because he the person signing it has to have the authority to sign on behalf of the other members of the family. He must be the head or a representative of that family unless legally you have no right to that property in future.

Proof of family owner ship and tracing the family land comes into play to determine who the true representatives are and if the land is a partitioned land, it gets even more complex.


After ascertaining this complex process and finding out who is really the true owner, then you can now pay the full price after negotiating and let the lawyer draw up the deed of assignment or conveyance agreement. Normally it is the owner’s lawyer that draws up the agreement but in my own opinion, it is always safer to let the purchaser’s lawyer draw up the agreements.

These agreements include:

1. Deed of assignment. (This deed of assignment contains the name, parties to the agreement, the fee paid for the land, the location of the land and the information on the survey plan. If it is registered as a land with a C/O, it must contain all the information in the c/o and make sure that the owner selling it MUST REIMBURSE THE BUYER if anything wrong goes on with the sale of that property)
2. Purchase Receipt: A purchase receipt agreement should also be compulsorily demanded to be drafted and signed by the owner unless he might deny collecting such an amount and state that he wasn’t the one who gave you that receipt and it wasn’t him that signed.

After this, you collect the survey plan, other necessary documents, probably settle the community hooligans or omoniles with some money so they won’t disturb your quiet enjoyment of the land when building.

After all these, then you can call your pastor or imam to pray for the land and pop your champagne peacefully.

Hope you now know what goes on in buying a land and how to avoid pain and sorrow when purchasing a property. Follow these rules strictly and you will be on the right track.

For those that want to take it to a different level and register the property with the land registry to obtain a C/O and Governor’s consent, read my post on how to calculate a C/O Yourself.

Cheers!    

Hmm, almost like scare-mongering, dear lawyer. At least you(or moderator) changed the title as it's not what I saw this morning.

That was educative.Thanks a milloin

I am presenting working on buying a land at Aspen Estate Isheri North. I am new to property acquisition and perhaps might just need some info from you as to this regard becos you did not mention anything about buying land from estate developers. What is the case when buying from an esate develop. Thanks

I am presenting working on buying a land at Aspen Estate Isheri North. I am new to property acquisition and perhaps might just need some more info from you as regards this, you did not mention anything about buying land from estate developers. I will like to know what is the case when buying from an estate develop. Thanks

@Lawyer,

Excellent info.

@ Lawer
Tell them pls.
Dont know how people keep falling 4 the same scam all the time

@Laywer,

What is the process of selling a land? What and what is required?

Your educative response will be appreciated.