When anyone wants to buy a property in Abuja, the first thing to do is conduct due diligence. This covers several aspects of the property. There is the legal status, meaning does the property fit your requirements, are you buying from the right person?
All these are the due diligence required before you embark on the purchase of property. Remember, fake transactions are products of selling fake papers, you could also buy cloned papers, even genuine papers without the authority of the owner. You can still be swindled. The crime is committed in different forms and you cannot exhaustively say these are the categories of crime regarding real estate transactions but the important thing is that most of them are being conducted by fake estate agents.
And the moment you start a transaction with a fake estate agent or agents, you can rest assured you may end up buying a fake land or property in Abuja.
An agent must be under the regulation of a government body. If you are dealing with someone who is not regulated then definitely you are at risk.
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There are several professionals in the built environment, we have architects, lawyers, builders, and engineers etc., if your starting point is any of these, they all know they are regulated, so e.g. you secure an architect to purchase land for you, that architect knows he has to go through an estate surveyor and valuer who is regulated.
But it is not about an agent or chain of agents, the buck stops on the table of the estate surveyor and valuer. You will see a lot of caveat emptor signs, meaning if you buy you are taking a risk.
At the beginning of the property development circle, there is first the decision to develop e.g. if you want to build a hotel the estate surveyor would look for land that is planned for such, in the appropriate district, and must be commercially viable to the investor. Professional decisions are therefore taken on behalf of the investor.
Then the next thing is to conduct search, and it is not enough to conduct search on the legal status of the land alone, in Abuja most people go to AGIS and pay money to get search reports, no, one should go beyond that.
You should also search the personality of the person you’re buying from; know your customer; if it’s a company conduct, a search at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
When paying for a property, if the name of the account you’re paying is not the same as the one on the certificate or document, that is a red flag, you have to be more careful, so search is very important.
Investors also need to conduct search with the Development Control Department to know the development guidelines for the use you intend, and engineering or environmental impact assessment search in appropriate government offices.
When all these processes are positive, the architects conduct a design in tandem with engineers before the building development commences properly. through a builder.
The estate surveyor’s work stops at the end of the day when the land is purchased or the property is handed over to the owner except if the client wishes to retain him or her as a project or facility manager.
Thus the estate surveyor is at the beginning of the process and he is also at the end. He lives with his mistakes. If you see problems mostly its because the estate surveyor was not involved from the beginning.
Currently in Nigeria, there are over 8,000 registered estate surveyors and valuers and this is a good number that can service the market. So Nigerians are advised to patronize any of these for the securities of their purchase.
Esv. Adamu Kasimu is an Abuja-based estate surveyor and valuer
