Prospective land buyers in Nigeria can now bypass some of the difficulties associated with third-party interference, as Land Property And More (LPM) Limited, has unveiled ‘Orbital Land Search Information’ a technology that makes the purchasing of land easier and faster.
LPM says the technology is a response to the ugly experiences of land buyers in the hands of landowners and estate agents.
“It was our quest to take land transactions in Lagos State in particular and Nigeria in general to the digital space that led to the birth of Land Property And More (LPM) Limited. We at LPM have at the core of our philosophy a Lagos State where land transactions would be done like you have stocks being traded on the Lagos Stock Exchange,” Napoleon Agbelogode, LPM’s Founder/CEO, revealed in an interview.
He explained that ‘Orbital Land Search Information’ is embedded in the company’s website— www.Landpropertyandmore.com and, by logging on to the site, a buyer automatically initiates a land transaction process.
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According to him, all that the buyer needs is a copy of the land survey which is scanned and uploaded on the website. “After completing the short personal information requested, you can then pay the requested processing fee.
“Once the above steps are completed by the intending land buyer, the search commences and, within 48 hours, the search information is sent to the client via the email address he has provided,” Agbelogode assured, adding that this could be done from anywhere in the world.
The new technology also works with an App, according to the CEO. This is called ‘LPM App’ which, he explained, was a gateway to putting the contents of the www.landpropertyandmore.com website in a smartphone to enable the land buyer to have access to the technology with convenience.
“When the LPM App is downloaded to your phone, it puts our flagship product at your fingertips and that is the ‘Orbital Land Search Information.’ Details of this product, what it is, and how it works can be obtained from the website. As a land agent or property trading firm or land consultant, you can also upload your properties on the LPM website for sale to the general public,” he said.
In Lagos and other big Nigerian cities, one of the most critical steps in buying landed assets is carrying out what is called due diligence or, a technical terms, orbital search information on the land to buy.
Many have had their fingers burnt for failing to do this due diligence or doing so through the wrong agents.
Jideofor Nnamdi is one such victim of lack of due diligence before committing money to buying land.
Nnamdi is a hardworking Lagos resident who, in his bid to get on to the homeownership ladder and end the nightmare with his landlord and his house rent, went to Ijegun, a Lagos suburb, and bought a plot of land through an estate agent.
He told BusinessDay that, just a few months after, when he started clearing the land for development, he had the shock of his life. He was accosted on two different occasions by two different groups of people. One group, which was very unfriendly, claimed to be native landowners known as ‘Omonile’.
The other group, which was neither violent nor given too much talk, he noted, simply advised him to steer clear of the land. “Their reason was that the land was under government acquisition,” he said.
That was how Nnamdi’s hard-earned money, like ether, disappeared into thin air and dashed his dream of owning his own home in a city where house rent is a major consideration on household annual spend.
Other major victims of land grabbing, which the LMP technology seeks to end, are Diaspora Nigerians who generally buy properties through proxies. These people have frequently been defrauded by even their own relatives who collect money from them either to build or buy property, but rarely do.
Middlechase Properties, a real estate investment firm, says it has been able to address this problem significantly for its Diaspora Nigerian customers. “We have adopted a more advanced way of communicating with them,” Chudi Kalu, the company’s CEO, told BusinessDay in an interview.
“We have over 36 CCTV channels on site such that from your phone, you can inspect our property,” he added, noting that, “if someone is in Canada and wants to see how his property is faring, we have an innovative way to go about it so that the person can see what is happening on site from his phone.”
