Building your own home can be very daunting, complex and most often complicated. The building process is thought to be so complicated and fraught with twist and turns that most of us are afraid of putting up our own building not only because of the cost, but also the actual process itself. With this state of things, one will need all the information there is to ease any apprehension. And most of this information should come from those we contract to see our project to fruition. But my research has revealed that most times this is not the case. How? Either some contractors are afraid of losing jobs or not forsighted enough, or in a hurry; don't just show any iota of duty of care towards clients. Not even when the client's wish is not feasible and sustainable. I will go through this step by step.

Money
There are a number of ways we come about enough money to build. Some source funds from financial institutions, some save up and some get a near one-off windfall from maybe inheritance, retirement entitlement, business deals or even winning the lottery. Whatever way we cough up funds to build, there is the real need to do some self assessment and cash-flow projections and match the size of our project with our cash flow. It won't help to punch above our weight. Running out of money for a long stretch during the building process can add considerable cost which could be disastrous. All too often contractors, ranging from architects to builders and estate agents fail to go through cost-flow with clients even when its so obvious that the client is over optimistic. I have seen folks with grandiose and expansive architectural design only to abandon such projects at the foundation stage and then start praying for God to provide. A professional architect with a duty of care should be able to advice and educate such client on cost effective and sustainable alternative.

Expense Documentation
In building your home nothing will prepare you for the amount of information and paperwork you will have to deal with. Purchases, invoices, receipts and legal documents will be flying in from all directions. You should build a system to compartmentalize this information deluge for reference and Cross-reference and easy retrieval. It is the only way you can benchmark how well you are doing financially in terms of how well you are within set target and budget. Microsoft Excel can be of tremendous help. If you have problem running Excel, do it the old fashion way; open an expense paper file. It is also recommended you open a separate bank account strictly for your project which is the easiest way to get a quick overview of real time money expended from your bank statement.

Land Acquisition
The process of land acquisition is a very important segment and should not be taken lightly. Enough information is needed to prevent doing business with the wrong kind. To this end, it is recommended to avail oneself with the Nairaland Property Library put together by Lawyer, the Property Section moderator. It is rich, encompassing as it is engaging.

Having said that, it is possible you avail yourself and put to practice the advice put forward by Lawyer and even engage his services but still end up with a troubled property (Land). How? Land acquisition is made up of two main type of information for a trouble free land purchase: primary information and secondary information. Lawyer has done well with providing us with the hands-on (primary) information. So what is the secondary information? It is the law of contract.

There are a number of sources to acquire land; from individuals, indigenous families, estate agents or government schemes. From the list, government schemes are the safest but more cumbersome. So one will assume that individuals and families will be the least safe right? If you ensure due diligence as adviced by lawyer, this assumption may be false. From my research the least safe are estate vendors and agents without a duty of care towards clients.

The expansion of the property market in recent time due to a steadily growing middle class, politicians and militants, has occasioned an increasing need for property prospectors to locate their dream home within a gated, well planned and mapped out estates for security reasons and aesthetic purpose. While there are some serious professionally managed estate firms, the market is proliferated by fly-by-night, me-too and amateurish vendors who are either simply out of their depth due to paucity of capability and capacity resource or are using estate vending as a front for fraud. Not many agents will be upfront with this truth. Most just want to sell and make their cut.

In the course of my research, there are numerous individuals I spoke with who have bought into various estate schemes in the Lagos/Ogun axis, who have made payments in some cases going for over four years but are yet to be allocated land! Such cases are also prevalent here in the property section in Nairaland. How is this possible?

My research shows that there are mainly two reasons why an estate may be troubled. It is either the estate is under subscribed and vendors don't achieve a critical economic mass or the the scheme is over subscribed with some purchaser being left out of pocket. Another feature wit such estate schemes are vendors with minimal or next to nothing equity contribution, so lack funds to provide the necessary infrastructure and overly rely on not only the payments from clients, but also weave in a clause in their terms of purchase that prospectors will further pay "a certain percentage" fee usually dubbed Infrastructure Development Levy. This is where the problem lies. What is a certain percentage? It can be from 1% to 99.99%. And certain percentage of what?

I came across cases where "victims" have paid for land but were later saddled with hefty sums running into million as infrastructure levy. There was the case of a family resident in Egbeda in Lagos State who made payment for a land in an estate sometimes in 2008 worth N350k and is yet to be allocated land due to a further demand for infrastructure levy of N1.5 million!. So ensuring information as provided by the property section on such occasion may not be enough because the land is there, gazetted and vendors truly registered as a going concern but the land is still troubled. This is where a basic knowledge of the law of contract will help.

The legal minds will tell you that a contract is an agreement giving rise to obligation which are enforced or recognised by law between two or more persons to do or abstain from doing some acts or acts, their intention being to create legal relation and not merely to exchange mutual promise. There must be not only an agreement, but supported by consideration which may consist either profit or benefit accruing to one party or some detriment or loss suffered by the other. In our case with estate vendors, there must be an offer from the vendors and an acceptance from the prospector.

So the question is if you paid or hoping to pay into an estate scheme from a fly by night vendor but was not allocated land, is that contract valid despite a demonstration of offer/acceptance and consideration. Can one seek a judicial review for one's land to be allocated? Well an alleged contract will not be enforced unless the parties have expressed themselves with reasonable clarity on the matter of essential terms. So the clause that said one will further pay at a later date a "certain percentage" for infrastructure as a prerequisite for land allocation is an essential term, any such contract is inchoate (incomplete). The court normally will not make up a contract for the parties and enforce it. Such contract will not be enforceable unless the vague term (certain percentage) is meaningless; the contract itself provides a method of clarifying the contract (eg pay 15% of the sum of purchase for infrastructure) or the court can complete the contract by reference to a trade practice.

So in acquiring your dream land, especially from an estate, don't rush into any agreement, research and please pay the little extra to your solicitor to study any terms and condition imposed and furnish you with any implication. This skirting of the law of contract is not nearly enough, it is only a guide for you to know and ask the necessary question and engage a legal mind. Do not cut corners.

To Be Cont'd