Buying Properties for Dummies: How To Buy Property in Lagos

Want to buy property in Lagos Nigeria? Nigeria is incredibly notorious for being a difficult place to buy properties. The law states that all of the lands into State Land, meaning that your land couldn’t be owned privately for the reasons of the state. Lagos in particular has a thing called a “Consent Fee”, which requires the Governor’s consent before there would be an assignment in the title, to use, occupy, and improving property with a statutory certificate. But, that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t buy property in Lagos. All that it means is that when buying a house in Lagos, you should know what to do.

How to Buy Property in Lagos

Finding The Papers

Before anything else, finding legal documents is a must. It’s not just about being pedantic as much as fully knowing the property that you’re going to procure. Fully demanding all of the legal documents from the seller such as the property title is a good way to know if you’re not going to be let on buying a bogus property for sale in Lagos.

Investigating

Fraudulence is notorious when it comes to buying houses in Lagos. Remember to always practice caution as properties in Lagos aren’t as you really can’t trust anything at face value. This applies not only to Nigeria but to all places in general.

Investigate both the seller and the property that you’re aiming to buy. Check if the seller has the validity to own the property that they’re selling, and then ask your lawyer to double-check both the property and the seller. Your lawyer would ask the correct question and would request the correct documentation from the seller and determine if the seller of the property is the real owner.

Next, investigate whether or not the property has any other pending litigation or if the property is free from any form of Government acquisition. Your lawyer would also check if the property is free from any pending interests and checking the appropriate documents for the property.

Viewing

Now that the checking and investigating process have been completed, then comes one of the processes that you yourself could enjoy; viewing the property for yourself.

Conducting an ocular inspection of the property that you’re going to procure to check if it lives up to your expectation would always be important. Getting a registered surveyor to visit your property with you would also be ideal so that you could know every little idiosyncrasy that comes with properties.

Finishing Steps

This is the process where all of the legal documentation could be finished as well. Contract signing, negotiation, would all be done here. Though, Lagos has 3 mainland transaction documents involved, namely the contract of sale, the receipt, and the Deed of Assignment. Both your lawyer and the seller’s lawyer would fully complete this process as well.

Now that you’ve signed the document and are already in possession of the original documents and title, the land is now ready for purchase. Congratulations, you’ve now owned land in Lagos!

Just like in many places, when you think to buy property in Lagos, it is incredibly difficult. It’s a complete landmine full of Government interference and fraudulent legal documents. Being smart has always paid its dividends in places that matter, and such is the case when it comes to buying properties. Whether you’re buying a house to rent in Lagos, or just want to find a place where you want to stay, buying smartly always does the trick for everyone.