Land As Wealth Facilitator – By Ademola H. Adigun

Earlier on in my life, when I couldn’t afford to, I took a million naira that I had saved up to buy my first BMW. I had always dreamt of buying a car at Tincan. I left Abuja in company of a work colleague and prized cars. Transferred the money from Guardian Express Bank to Lagos. Probably the most foolish thing I had done till then.

A plot of land in Kubuwa then was about 800k to 1.2m in good areas. Had I been wiser, I would’ve started my property journey earlier.

Years later, I would invest considerably in land but with a lot of foolishness. Land is a store of wealth and a wealth facilitator for the wise.

How do you make that happen. When buying land, the most important part of the transaction is the genuineness of the title and your ability to perfect that title no matter the location. Any land you purchase without genuine title is a foolish investment and a potential loss to you. So rule 1, always verify title. The cost of verifying some land might cost more than the land. But make that investment in title verification and perfection.

Then start small. Don’t wait till you can afford land in town. Buy genuine land in the outskirts of town or in town centers where it is much cheaper. At some point we learnt a Church was coming to a location and we bought for the purposes of reselling to the Church. We made tidy amounts.

I bought plots of land in One Man Village. I kept the lands for appreciation and when I thought I needed to buy in town it was the plots sold that afforded my prime land in Abuja main.

Once you buy land in a prime location, you open a door to wealth. Land with a good title in a good location in a major city is always desirable as a collateral for loans. You build a business with loans. It’s cash that allows you go into trading or other kind of investments.

There are lands you keep for capital. There are lands you keep to fund your lifestyle. I went for a course in Glasgow , then my buddy Olawale Sanni came over from Aberdeen to sleep over. This was in 2009. He was pursuing his Masters then. He told me of a classmate of his that used land to fund his own schooling . Anytime he was broke, he would ask the wife to sell a plot to get money across to him. I listened actively.

You can as soon as you have a child, buy land in anticipation of a foreign masters if the child wants one.

There is the land you purchase for inheritance for your children. A friend of mine is facilitating a modular refinery . The initial cost of the modular refinery was supported by selling prime plots he inherited. A wise parent leaves such inheritance for their kids.

There is land you buy for the home of your dreams. You most likely will not have that fund at once. But you can buy the ones you can afford with genuine titles until they appreciate to afford you that prime one.

Don’t be emotionally tied to land. See it as an economic utility for growth and wealth creation. Again what you buy is not the physical land but the title to it. Many hardworking millionaires understand this. They keep a reasonable percentage of their wealth in titles.

Have an ear to the ground and work with good firms. Get a lawyer involved in almost all your purchases. Forget the cost of that to you…. It will save you tears.

If you can’t afford on your own… form or join investment clubs. Genuine ones.