Land title issues inimical to real estate development —- APDC

The high cost of land titles has been identified as major impediment to real estate development in Abuja in particular and Nigeria in general.

The Managing Director, Abuja Property Development Company (APDC), Lawal Aliyu Magaji stated this yesterday in Abuja, while speaking on One Square Metre, a real estate development programme. 

According to him, government, especially in the FCT, is going in the right direction; as they are trying to ease the process, and remove one of the major impediments to the growth of real estate in the area of title.

He said the new programme is making it possible to have titles within a very short period of time, something that has been a real problem, especially for those in the sector. 

Magali said: “At a particular time, we wanted to develop with Shelter Afrique. Nigeria is one of the biggest contributors to them, but in terms of benefits or loans, Nigeria is the least -that is in terms of getting funds from Shelter Afrique and the major issue is title. 

“Shelter Afrique will not fund projects without Certificate of Occupancy (CoO), and you find out that most developers find it difficult to lay the premium. 

“Once you have the Right of Occupancy  (RoO), you feel you can go to the field and start something. But when the computation is done for the premium that you have to pay, you see that it is so massive.

“But now the government is trying to make it easy for people to be able to have those titles and we hope to see a lot of good in that.”