On Landed Property – Femi Akinwumi

One investment that could assist your early retirements in life is buying lands passively and holding it just as store of value. This is one area I have done so poorly despite my early exposure to wealth creation in that area.

My patience threshold is very low and I rush to sell as soon as I noticed a reasonable capital appreciation, even when I had no idea of what to do with proceeds of sales. Bulk of them ended up in the stock market and I lost all.

Once I bought a land for N10m and sold at N19m out of excitement that I had made good money. I was astonished when the same piece of land rosé to a value of N400m years later. I can count several of such hasty divestments in prime locations.

The critical factor is getting it in a good location where it is free from encumbrances, take a physical possession by putting a fence around it and securing the right government papers like C of O, and you can go home to sleep.

There is no other way to make old money than such passive investments while you still have other things going.

Please, I’m not a property consultant, nether am I recommending anyone, but sharing an experience or providing an advice I believe could benefit others.

This is superior to building properties all over the place. Especially to those of you living abroad and sending money home to relatives to assist with your projects, when you have no chance for proper supervisions and monitoring. You are better of buying multiples of lands, secured with good titles. When you are ready for your dream house, you simply sell some of your lands and buy a property of your choice from a reputable developer rather than building from the scratch with all the risks of diversions of your hard earned money.

Investments in lands are also easier to convert into cash than built up properties. Existing properties these days are mostly bought by developers for demolition and modern reconstruction. So, why waste your time building houses that may be demolished for reconstruction when it is only for investment purposes.

I know some states like Lagos have laws limiting the period to which you can hold a vacant land especially in the government reservation areas, the trick is get a building approval for a very small unit like a BQ, which you can further use to secure possession.

You won’t learn this in any business school but the school of experience.

If I had harnessed all of my past opportunities in this area, by now I could easily be a retiree, enjoying old money, and only watching Arsenal thrash all these mid table clubs like Chelsea.

Please, do not repeat my mistakes, and all the people around me that toed this path some 20-25 years ago are stupendously rich today. They are the ones dictating to developers the structure they want on joint venture deals on lands that have appreciated 1000x.

The rich hardly tell the secrets of their successes, they enjoy the myth surrounding such, but when we die, we aren’t taking anything out of this world. The knowledge we don’t share for the benefits of others perish with us when we are gone.

I have done my part, let individuals pick what suits them.

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Akinwunmi is former banker and now a business man. He wrote from Lagos