₦airaland Forum

Do you know there are so many hidden Charges and taxes that you must pay when buying a land that could bankrupt you easily if your not careful? These taxes hide in plain sight and it is until you want to perfect your papers it will rear its ugly head. I have compiled a list of 4 Problematic fees that your not aware of and the earlier you start taking cognizance of it, the better:

1. Everybody wants to buy a land with a C of O but do you know that every owner of a C of O must pay a yearly fee per annum to the government for occupying that land. This fee is know as a GROUND RENT and it has a certain fee that holder must pay. For every year the person defaults in paying that GROUND RENT, the person incurs a penalty. But because of our very lax tax system, the holders of that C of O rarely pay that amount and in most situation, they are totally ignorant of the fees they are to pay.

The problem now arises when a new buyer is interested in buying that Land with a C of O. If you don't do a comprehensive check on that C of O, you will never know that your about to INHERIT SOMEONE ELSE'S DEBTS at once. The Land registry Tax department will compute the Ground rent from inception that the C of O was obtained, compute the penalties , value it at today's inflationary rates and give it to you before you can process your Governors Consent. That is why the cost of Governor's consent is so high in some people's case because they don't know that they are carrying the load and problems of other people's taxes as their own burden.

The best way to avoid this scenario is to make sure the Lawyer doing the search for you carries out a comprehensive check at the tax registry to know exactly how much the holder of the C of O is owing the Government. Once you have an idea of the costs owed, you can now use that as a veritable bargaining tool to deduct money from the asking price of the property. I have used this method so many times for my clients to obtain a reduced fee for the Land transaction. Whenever i hit the owner of the C of O with his Ground Rent Charges, he is always eager to sell the land quickly at a reduced price so as not to continue holding on to a burden that could ruin him at any given time. Sometimes Sellers are willing to share the Ground Rent so as to make it equitable and both parties suffer the penalty.

Make sure you know the Ground Rent of any property that has a C of O before hand , lest you suffer the consequences of it.

Below is a C of O of a property that was not properly investigated to know how much ground rent the previous owner was owing. After the New purchaser bought it and wanted to perfect his own papers, the Tax Office hit the new buyer with a N315,000 LAND USE CHARGE that was totally unexpected and unprepared for. Learn to avoid such silent deadly taxes by doing a proper search before you fall victim of the Tax office

Boss13: Lawyer how can one carry out a land search and how can we stop the menace of omoniles

Check my site www.omonilelawyer.com to learn how to go about it.

Cheers

This is the result of not carrying out a proper search. A search at the land registry would have shown that the land has been acquired and a committed land to avoid like a plague. It has nothing to do with APC OR PDP. It's just the individual who chooses to buy a land without taking all the necessary precautions to search properly. Now the Omoniles would have disappeared with their money and that's just the reality on the ground. It's just a lesson for future purchasers of land in Lagos to shine their eyes, do a search so as not to become victims of land wahalas.

@whitecat007@all

Please let's keep our discuss here civil. No insults or personal abuse. We disagree to agree but when it is getting personal then sanctions will be taken to protect the thread from denegrading into something else

Moderator

@brabus

I want to ask you one straight question. Are You a trained Architect, Builder or Structural Engineer with certification. If Yes then send me your Details and certificates privately Via email and i will resolve this matter once and for all. If not i will not allow you ever solicit jobs on Nairaland here as a professional ever.

Of course. Take the landlord to court first with all the receipt as evidence and he would win plus he would still stay in that house free till the case ends.

And this is the pope Chris okotie says is evil, an anti-Christ and worships satan while Chris okotie is the one going to heaven with his jeri curled hair, divorce loving pastor and beauty pageant organizing lifestyle. I wonder the last time Chris okotie walked out at night to help the homeless without the retinue of his fierce looking body guards and his multitude of range rover convoys waltzing through Ikeja and showing off!

I didn't ban you. It was the anti spam auto bot that did it in error. You have been unbanned

@all

Brabus has been banned from Nairaland until this fraud allegation has been cleared up and the parties to this claim has given him a clean bill of health. I implore all parties to work together to clear up this mess so we move forward. Once everything has been sorted out give me the terms of settlement via mail and we call it a day.

This is also a firm warning to other architects, builders or suppliers on Nairaland property that such issues will no longer be condoned or ignored. I understand that business deals don't go we'll as planned due to certain reasons or the other but total non performance of the job after collecting money must cease to exist on this forum.

Please your advised to govern yourself accordingly

@ brabus

I have received 5 calls and emails from people complaining about this fraud and while I choose to turn a blind eye to some of the activities that goes on in this section, I won't condone fraud, misappropriation and collecting people's money without doing the job or updating them. People have complained in the past about issues like this but I chose to allow reason prevail; now this is getting out of hand.

The one that really pissed me off is you showing pictures of your work done but the windows weren't the ones you collected money from the client to purchase. Nairaland Properties will not condone it and you have 24 hours to set the record straight or perform your duties to the clients for which you obtained money from or refund their money. Failure to adhere to these demands mean you will be criminally charged and will be banned from Nairaland

That's very wrong. If you want to give someone quit notice, you do it validly and legally. The fact he is still paying you rent without any proper quit notice gives him the right to claim he has a subsisting tenancy agreement with you and if he doesn't leave, the law will back him that he wasn't given a proper quit notice. Lets wait till his tenancy expires and if he refuses to go then we would devise other methods; but until then, you have no choice but to wait

Did you receive the 3months payment from him?

Chinom: Lawyer said he verified the C of O at Alausa registry and it was confirmed genuine. That is the part that really worries me. Does it mean that those registry officials do register fake lands and issue fake C of Os ?. How was Mr. Ibe able to obtain a fake document which checked out at the govt. registry.

Is the thieving lawyer telling the truth?. So confusing !!.

He is lying. He did no search. If he had done a proper search he would see the picture of the woman or owner of the property in the C of O

trekkie: @ lawyer, i believe that the reason a lot of folk don't want to verify their land deal is that foolish as this sounds, they feel "cheated" if they pay for the verification and it turns out to be fake. no one wants to pay for bad news.
now what i propose is that you have start a directory of genuine property deals if you can. of course this would mean you do the verification on your own pocket, but i believe that that will be figured into the cost of the land or property when people come to pay. i for one have been following your work on nl and i believe that you are on the up and up (can't say the same about most lawyers) and would feel safer going into a deal that has your "seal" on it. kinda like nafdac number if you know what i mean.
whaddaya think?

Lol lovely idea! Will think of it sir

I appreciate you

It's not a valid quit notice because it violates so many rules of a quit notice

This morning i was just going through the some papers online and i stumbled upon this old article in the Vanguard Newspapers. The article is so disgusting and annoying that i have to just republish it for your own viewing. The rate land scammers and property speculators go about stealing other people's lands and defrauding people off their hard earned money is so disheartening and painful to read. I wonder why they don't have the fear of God in them. Excerpts of the Article is written below:

Land Deal: Lawyer, others dupe man of N24m with fake C of O

on August 13, 2011 / in Crime Guard 12:00 am / Comments

By IFEANYI OKOLIE

Three suspected fraudsters including a lawyer are correctly cooling off at the Special Fraud Unit, SFU, Milverton Ikoyi, Lagos, following their arrest recently by detectives from the SFU, who got wind of their criminal activities in cloning Certificates of Occupancy.

The fraudsters who operate a close knitted syndicate in the state met their waterloo after they successfully duped their unsuspected victim of a whopping sum of N24m in a purported land deal using a fake C of O.

Police sources said, the suspects who were identified as Sheu Kabiru, Samuel Ajibola and Bar. Rotimi Akintokun were apprehended following a petition made by one of their victims Kami Olaleye, who claimed he was swindled off the sum of N24m after he read through an advertisement in of the National dailies of May 2008, where a piece of land at Magodo GRA II, Shangisha, Lagos, was placed for sale.

*The suspects Sheu Kabiru, Samuel Ajibola and Bar. Rotimi Akintokun

He said he paid the said sum to the lawyer, Rotimi Akintokun, of No.1, Balogun Street, Ikeja, who acted then as lawyer to the family. An old woman and two others who posed as the real owners of the land executed Deed of Assignment and they also issued the victim a receipt.

But Kami Olaleye, was shocked when he discovered that the C. of O. and letter of allocation given to him by the owners were all faked on verification at the Land Registry, Alausa.

Following their arrest Sheu Kabiru, 54-year-old man from Kwara State, confessed to the crime and explained that the syndicate operates with Rotimi Akintokun as their lawyer and ring leader. He also said Akintokun assigns roles to all members of the syndicate.

He introduced one old woman from Ikorodu to pose as the real owner of the land, one Iya Osa as her daughter, Jibola as mama’s son, one Lekan Dudu who produced the fake documents, then one Tope as a member of Tokosi family, and Ibe who acted as the agent.

The money was paid into the Rotimi’s account and he was the one who shared the money to all of us. Rotimi said 10 percent of the money was meant for security, 25 percent for himself, 20 percent for Ibe. “I and four others were given N11.5million and my own share N3m, Jibola took 2.5m and Tobe got and others N2.5m”.

When asked how he spent his own share of the loot. Kabiru said he used part of it to process a Visa to Tunisia, which turned out to be fake when he travelled to Tunis and was turned back. But some of the money was spent on clothes and I gave some to my girlfriend. But the situation of the country led me into fraud,” he admitted.

Samuel Ajibola, who impersonated the real owner’s son as Basiru Tokosi, hails from Okewa in Oro-ago Kwara State. He claimed that he was introduced into the business of fraud by Sheu Kabiru.

“It was Sheu Kabiru who assigned me the role of the son of the actual owner of the land, Abibatu Tokosi. But I don’t know how they got the C. of O. But the whole transaction took place in the lawyer’s office at Ikeja and the lawyer also coordinated the share of the loots. He gave me N12million naira cheque to withdraw the same day. My own share was just N2million and I spent them in buying a Nissan Primera Car for N800,000. I rented a room and parlour at No. 48, Adebowale Ojodu Sabo and furnished it. I also did some shopping,” he said.

But Rotimi Akintokun, the alleged leader of the syndicate who hails from Ijebu-Ijesha in Osun State denied having any knowledge of fraud. He narrated how he was lured into the syndicate. According to him “George Ibeh introduced me to one Mrs. Tokosi and her children and then and they gave me the C of O which I took to confirm the genuineness at the registrar in Alausa Record Room, before the sum of N24million was paid into my account.”

He also explained that the advertisement of the land in the National dailies was done by George Ibeh who acted as an agent to the owner of the land. There is no doubt that the whole transaction was done in my office and that signed all the necessary documents, but I had no knowledge that the C.of O was faked.

He also gave the name of all members of the syndicate as Mr. Bashiru, Jibola, Alfa Sheu Kabiru( Mama Tokosi)Iya Ikorodu (her daughter) Iya Osa (Mr. George Ibeh and himself. He admitted receiving N8million as the money accruable to him while N 5million was given to George Ibeh. The remaining N11 million was shared by the rest.

The Commissioner of Police in Charge of the SFU Chinweke Asadu told Crime Guard that all the arrest suspects wwould be charged to court at the completion of investigations. He also assured that the police will go after all those who participated in the fraud.


- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/08/land-deal-lawyer-others-dupe-man-of-n24m-with-fake-c-of-o/#sthash.YLOnamFd.dpuf

Although the article is old, it still has most of the key ingredients fraudulent Land scammers use to scam and deceive people till date:

1. A Fake C of O was paraded around as the document that would be given to the buyer but the buyer paid N24Million without verifying the authenticity of the Certificate of Occupancy.

2. The Fraudulent Scammers posed as Children and Owners of the Property and pretended to the authorized Signatory to the documents and ended up giving the Seller a Fake deed of Assignment, Fake C/O, Fake Letter of Allocation and fake Receipt.

3. Money was paid into the Lawyers account Why should money be paid into the Lawyer's account when the so called family members were present at the Signing and there is no Power of Attorney Granting the Lawyer to authority to receive Money on their behalf?

4. The so called property was advertised in a National daily but the Seller did not take steps to verify the Agent, Seller(s), their place of abode and how they obtained the Documents

5. Also any Property Lawyer that is well versed in Property law and land matters should know that a C of O Would only contain the name of the original owner of the property and he or she is the only person that has the right to sell that property to another person. There is no need for people to pretend to be children or members of a family when it has nothing to do with them and a proper search at the Land registry would show the passport photograph of the individual who has the C of O. How the seller of the Land managed to avoid a simple land verification to ascertain all these facts by employing an experienced property lawyer or land verification expert is beyond baffling to say the least.

6. Finally the most annoying part of it is what these land scammers would do with your hard earned money. You can read how they shared N24Million to buy cars, spend your money on their girl friends, use it to travel round the world at your expense, rent swanky apartments and go shopping with your money.

( I highlighted this part so that it will really hurt you to know what it means to buy a land without doing a proper verification. You work thankless hours of the day to provide shelter for your family and when your ready, you choose to do Ijebu by ignoring the simple details and not verifying the land. You argue and try to haggle the price to do a proper land search but your afraid of the Seller, Omoniles, Agents and all those scammers breathing down your neck to pay Millions for the land today unless another person would buy it and you finally succumb to their pressure and find out later you have been scammed. See what they would use your hard earned money to do above. Buy Suya, beer plus Nwokbi, Buy clothes for Girlfriends and take them shopping with your money, buy flashy cars that you cant afford now because you have prioritized your life and budget and rent swanky apartment etc. Is it worth all this stress and unhappiness?

Now they have brought Special fraud Unit into the Matter plus High court and the amount of money they would use to settle police and other people. How much would it have cost the Seller to organize a proper land verification or engage experts to do it? I doubt he would recover the full sum paid to these scammers and its very sad to hear stories like this that could have been avoided from the very start.

7. Last but not the least; The Lawyer Fall my hand sha and fellow NBA members. Very unprofessional and extremely unethical in his dealings concerning this issue.

Please shine your eyes and learn to do a land verification before you buy any land. Contact professions to help you out lest you throw away Millions of your family fortune to these kind of people you have just read about above. It cost you nothing and if you choose to ignore it, be prepared to leave a life of pains and sorrow.

What does it profit Manutd to beat Arsenal last week and draw with Cardiff this week and still be 7 points behind Arsenal? Makes no sense! Foolish Priorities!*Yimu*

I can't believe am seeing this post for the first time and honestly I wish I know what your real name is. Am very grateful for your kind words sir and I promise to always serve Nairalanders with the utmost respect, humility and honesty to safe guard your money from fraudulent land scammers. God bless you too and may God replenish your pocket a million times fold.

Thanks for your posts Sir. You raised some observations about my posts and i will try to clear the air on them in a satsifactorily way.

NSTC: Mr Lawyer indeed most of your post are valuable and does help a lot of people,i personally think it is unfair to bring up this particular matter in the way you did.
Yes you offered your services to the said man but he chose not to employ your services,he hasn't really done anything wrong by that. If i lost 5 million Naira the last thing i want is to read all about it online,especially from a professional that should know all about confidentiality. There are several post in which you have advised people about the dangers of purchasing properties without due diligence and am sure a lot of Nairalanders are grateful for that but it is absolutely unnecessary to score points out of another person's loss ,especially if that person can come across all the " bullets " fired his way. i.e " one chance "

First of all sir, i have taken the time and pain to blot out the name of the person, the area that is committed and the surveyors name that drew up the Survey plan so no body can accuse me of scoring points out of another person's loss. Rather it is to show people a live example of a document that could lead a future buyer into problems if he or she fails to heed the advise of people like me not to do a land search.

Secondly, am bringing this up not because i did not do this search but because there are so many people like him that choose the easy way out and when there is a problem they run back to the original source to help them solve a difficult problem. I know the solution to his problem and i can easily bill him 500,000 and choose not to write about this danger but i have chosen to teach people how to avoid such based on the document and not the person's loss. Remember he hired another lawyer and surveyor to do his work and still came out short. How do you explain this gross Incompetence?

Finally you are a pro. and reserve the right to charge whatever amount you feel your services are worth but it doesn't really cost 50k to verify the status of any land. I wouldn't have mentioned this but for the fact you seem to always give the impression you are out to help people save cost.
As recently as 4 months ago i instructed a Lawyer to conduct a search on 2 properties and he only charged me 20k for both ,though i must say the plots are on the same block. And he specifically told me it will only cost him 3k each at Alausa, he is a friend and knows that won't stop me paying for his services.

This in no way discredit the good work you do by educating people about the intricacies of purchasing Landed properties,all i say is be professional to the core. Salut

Thanks for calling me a pro but i would pick holes in your above statement and break down the cost of what the search entails.

Doing a search for a property that has a C/O manually costs roughly 4000 but that is not the cost of getting a Certified true copy of the search. Did he give you a certified true copy of the search report? If he did, then you would know its not N3K as you stated above. I don't do manual searches, I make sure i have the hard copy proof from the Land Bureau office to back up my claim and you can see many of them i have posted on Nairaland for free.

Secondly you must have searched a government scheme or residential private estate with a layout and once you search one, you have searched all of them. Why then should he charge you for 3 k each when all the blocks and layout cost the same thing. I dont think he was saving you money there. Finally why charge you 20k when his only job was to go to the land search office to jot out the search report? Did he go to the site to take the coordinates with a surveyor? How much do you think it is to call a registered surveyor to go to a site and confirm the coordinates and give you a detailed report? 3K?

Our search fees cover alot of things ranging from going to the Seller or Omoniles place of residence wherever they are staying or hiding, tracing the other family members or sellers, going to the Land bureau to confirm if the C of O or gazette is authentic or valid, visiting the stamp duty office to confirm the authencity of receipts stamped, Visiting the courts to confirm whether there is an outstanding litigation or not and a host of other things that i cannot mention due to our search secrets. If you can make 3 trips from Ikeja to Ibeju Lekki to confirm ownership, fight stubborn and fraudulent omoniles or sellers, go to their offices, go to court, the land registry, go to the land to take coordinates, measure the land, tip all the officials there to give you the current report and present state of things with a 20k budget and expect to get a favourable and impartial search report minus payment of staff to do a good job, please i would readily pay you that 20k right now to help me do 3 searches at Badagry, Ikorodu Outskirt and Agbara.

There is a very big difference between going to the land bureau to do a search on a C of O or Consent from the comfort of your sitting room for N5000 and going out there in the field rain or sunshine to get to the bottom of an impending fraud and still have the grace of God not endorse a land that could fetch me hundreds of thousands of Naira if i choose to give a favourable search report. Like you rightly said Sir, i am a PRO at this and if your honest with me, with all i have written, you will realise that i am still subsidizing the N50K Land verification cost if i am to achieve all this talkless of doing another free search in-case the land is found to be defective.

Thanks again for your comment and hope to see more of your posts in the nearest future and if you want to know more about what we do and what the search entails, feel free to check out http://omonilelawyer.com/land-verification-service/how-does-it-work/. It spells out what we charge and why we charge and what we are charging for to get you a proper land to buy free from any sort of encumberance and we have a bloody good track record for doing our jobs impeccably.

Edoblakky: Permit me to share an experience. Over 2 years ago, I contracted a lawyer who seemed vast in land matters to buy a certain land in Osapa London. He charged me 200k to do search and to negotiate the land in my favour. I paid him after buying the land for 10M and found out I'd been hoodwinked. I called the lawyer and demanded for everything I spent. He seemed coorperating and we started recovering my money and he later took off and I've not seen him as we speak. Though it took me over 2 years to recover my money by myself. Now, I know better as I bought another land at Ikate also in Lekki. I used another Lawyer who did a thorough search and filed the search documents for me to see. Pls if you pay a lawyer to do search on a land, ask the lawyer to give you a documented proof

Wow N200,000 for search! Na wah o! People get Mind Sha! Very Glad you recovered your money. Its not a pleasant experience to fall victim to these scammers. I have being a victim of a land scammer and i know the pains you must have gone through. I thank God for your life and your added wisdom to always do a search before you buy your next land

baffylander: Do people still buy land(s) without authenticating the veracity or otherwise of same especially in a fast-developing city like lagos? ...like seriously ...i give up... A dumb person will always remain a dumb person...

Please sir, don't say that. Most people who buy lands buy them out of ignorance because they don't know the laws or procedure on how to avoid buying defective lands. Everything is shrouded in secrecy and these fraudulent land sellers come up with different scams everyday to deceive people and truthfully even though i have been doing this business for more than 5 years now, i am still learning on the job. I was almost scammed yesterday and i thought i was a guru in it and know every land scam trick in the book.

There is no sane Nigerian who would throw Millions of Naira away if they know that land is bad. Its because we don't know that is why they fall for these scammers and its our duty to help them survive these painful periods they are going through while consciously trying to avoid being the next victims of such land scams.

Eyop: Lawyer i appreciate your job. However to add to what bfmconcepts asked,i will like to know what will happen if after paying #50,000 for the search fee and after conducting your search and it turns out negative like what happened to this man you mentioned,does it mean the #50k is gone without any achievement?

Because i am considering a situation where by after paying #50k and the 1st search turns out negative and i present another land matter to you,will it still warrant i pay another #50,000?

The N50,000 Land Verification Retainer will cover a period of 1 month. If at the end of the first search, we find out that there are issues or encumbrances on that property, the Client is entitled to select another Property within that same month from the moment we are instructed to conduct another search at no extra cost . If by the end of the search period we haven’t secured you a property that meets your approval based on our Verification Report, you have the option to pay a further Retainer to extend the search for subsequent land verification checks. We feel your pain that is why we are not always happy when a search has gone wrong or we discover that the land has issues. We have a history of turning down so many lands and continuing the search for the Client till we are both satisfied. Money isn't the issue here but peace of mind and ability to build in comfort.

Learn more about our services on http://omonilelawyer.com/land-verification-service/our-fees/

Cheers