An analysis of Land Acquisition Problems of Corporate Real Estate Developers in Lagos State

Site acquisition is often the corporate real estate developer’s first major commitment to a project but access to an acceptable site is a key challenge. Its process can be frustrating and unpredictable since many factors, often outside the developer’s control, can influence its success. Considering the importance of site acquisition in the corporate real estate development process and peculiarity of the developmental challenges posed by the land factor, this study exploits the real estate transactions and activities data of Lagos State, Nigeria to examine the process/procedure of land acquisition for corporate real estate development, to identify the distinctive site acquisition problems and subsequently assess the level of occurrence and impact of these identified problems on the corporate real estate development performance and rank in order of consequence. With the aid of self-administered questionnaire to sample the opinion of the selected Lagos-based corporate real estate development companies, 24 distinctive site acquisition problems were identified and further analysis revealed that lack of basic infrastructure to selected sites, high cost of acquisition, cumbersome government allocation and high cost of titling perfection were the top-ranked site acquisition problems employing relative indices and mean item score data analysis techniques. However, this study suggests that the public sector and the corporate real estate developers should work hand in hand especially in the availability and accessibility of developable sites for corporate real estate development.