How To Buy A Land In Nigeria From Abroad Without Fear Of Scam
- Posted by Karo Itoje in Blog Updates, Land Tips and Advice
- 4 Comments
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How To Buy A Land In Nigeria From Abroad Without Fear Of Being Scammed – How a Nigerian Living Abroad can Buy a Land in Lagos Nigeria without Losing Money or Making the Wrong Investment – Tips for buying a Land in Nigeria – How to Buy a land in Lagos. Invest in Lekki.
Are you a Nigerian living abroad and want to buy a land in Nigeria but you are afraid of losing your money to fraudsters, relatives or friends? And or you’re concerned that they will buy you a land that isn’t what you want just so they can keep some of the money you send for themselves?
These are genuine concerns. And you’re not alone. Every Nigerian abroad who want to invest in Nigeria real estate have these concerns too, and this has been some of the challenges those abroad face since years back. In this post however I share some tips to buy a land in Nigeria from abroad without any fear of getting scammed. And also without fear of investing in a poor land.
How to Buy a Land in Nigeria without Losing Money and Making a Wrong Investment
Anyone buying a land, whether living in Nigeria or based abroad is taking some risks. However when you’re not even in the country to manage things yourself your risk increases by 50%. The two challenges you face are:
- Who can I trust to handle the money I send to Nigeria to buy a Land?
- How am I sure they will not just buy me a swampy land in an undeveloped area and lie to me about it?
Option 1
If you want to remove all doubt completely, then make a trip to Nigeria, take care of this project yourself and travel back. Nobody can manage your affairs more than you can. It will only take a day to inspect the land and pay for it and get your receipt. Most of the real estate companies don’t do allocation immediately because they do it in batches. Some allocate after 90 days of purchase. So you can travel back and return for the allocation or have a relative represent you and get your documents. Your real estate consultant can do that for you too if you don’t want to involve your relatives. The most important thing is that you’ve seen what you’re buying, you know who you’re buying it from and you’ve handled payment yourself.
Read:
Be Careful When Involving Relatives In Your Real Estate Investments
Want To Send Money To A Sibling To Pay For A Land For You? DON’T!
Option 2 – Popularly used
Traveling to Nigeria is easier said than done. There’s a a lot to consider. Work, Ticket fees etc. Hence 90% of my clients chose this option. They work with me to get all the information they want about the land or property and make themselves from abroad. This is the option I recommend for you too. This way you don’t have to wait till when you visit the country to buy that land and risk paying more for it.
Read: The Problem With Waiting To Buy Land/Property – Clients Experiences
Here’s the process most of my clients follow to buy a property in Lagos.
They inspect the site/property through online videos, usually mine. For every site/estate/property I visit I make a video, and some are very detailed. If they are interested in an estate/land/building that I don’t have a video for, I immediately make arrange to go get a video from site for them.
With a video inspection they see exactly what they are paying for before they pay. They get to see if the land is swampy/waterlogged, which is something important.
They watch the video and ask questions, if any.
Get the survey/coordinates for the land to do a Search: For some who wish to verify the status of the land or property, they request for the survey which I am happy to give and they get someone to do a Search on their behalf and decide from what they find out whether or not to move forward.
They complete a soft copy application and make payment from abroad by themselves. It’s that simple. Some pay using a Nigerian account and some pay with foreign exchange services such as World Remit.
Make payment just like that when I haven’t met you?
Every once in awhile I talk with prospects who have strong trust issues and feel this way. I completely understand it. However there is really no ground to distrust the process simply because you are NOT paying into my account. And you should never pay into a personal account when dealing with an agent/consultant.
When paying for a transaction back home here is the safety guideline:
Pay into a corporate account. And make sure that the corporate account name you are paying into is the same as the company name that owns the land or property.
Nowhere in the transaction do I handle your money. My job is to guide you to make the right buying decision, monitor your application until it is processed, and make sure you get your documents.
You start to have issues when you send money to a third party. Never send money to me or any other third party. If you do, you risk losing it all. Even if you have proof that you sent money to this person, do you have the time to be involved in a legal battle should this person choose to keep the money for him/herself? I don’t think so! Do not give family members or friends such responsibility and risk bringing disharmony to your relationship with them because of money. Let professionals help you out. Use a real estate agent/consultant. Use any of the contact details on this site to contact me anytime let’s work together to get you investing in Nigeria real estate.
For more on the topic watch my video below.
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Comments 4
Dayo
How are we going to handle the documents, signatures and verification without my physical appearance? Please let me know how you will assure me that I won’t be scammed. Those are my two questions. Thanks
Karo Itoje
Your documents will be prepared for you as soon as you make all necessary payments with the company’s signature and seal on it and you can sign them later, perhaps when you visit Nigeria. In the meantime I as your consultant can pick them up from the company and give to any of your friend or relative in Lagos or better yet keep it with me until your visit. For verification hire a lawyer in Lagos, then I’ll send you the coordinates of the land you’re interested in to send to your lawyer to use to do his due diligence on the land. With the coordinates he can go to Land office at Alausa Lagos to confirm the authenticity of a land.
95% of my clients are based abroad and I’ve been able to successfully help them buy lands from their estate of choice with all the documents made available to them.
JamesF
Hello sir, what is the best way to make payment for real estate in Nigeria from abroad without having issues with the EFCC or related agencies
Karo Itoje
You can not have issues with EFCC or related agencies if you’re not involved in anything illegal. To pay for Real estate in Nigeria my clients abroad either transfer money from their Nigeria account to the developer’s account or use a third party payment service where they send money in the currency abroad and the third party service transfers the equivalent in Naira to the developer.