Homes for Sale in Nigeria from USA: Remote Closing

The Fact That Changes Everything: You Don't Buy Land in Nigeria

Under the Land Use Act, land in each state is vested in the Governor of that state, held in trust. What private parties hold is not freehold ownership in the American sense — it is a right of occupancy, granted by the state.

Two forms matter:

• Statutory Right of Occupancy — granted by the Governor, typically over urban land, evidenced by a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O), generally for a term of years rather than in perpetuity.
• Customary Right of Occupancy — granted by the Local Government, over non-urban land.

Practically, a right of occupancy behaves a lot like ownership: you can occupy, build, sell, mortgage and pass it on. But the framing matters, because it drives the single most consequential requirement in Nigerian conveyancing.

Governor's Consent: The Step Most Diaspora Buyers Skip

Under the Land Use Act, a transfer, assignment, mortgage or sublease of a statutory right of occupancy requires the Governor's consent. A transaction that hasn't obtained it is legally precarious — Nigerian courts have treated the absence of consent as going to the validity of the transaction itself.

Here is why this catches diaspora buyers specifically. You pay. You get a signed Deed of Assignment. You get receipts. Someone hands you a survey plan and, if you're lucky, a photocopied C of O in the seller's name. It all looks finished. You go back to Houston or Atlanta.

It is not finished. Until consent is obtained, and the deed stamped and registered, your interest is unperfected — and:

• You may be unable to sell or mortgage it later
• Your position against a competing claimant is materially weaker
• The costs of perfecting it later are typically higher, sometimes much higher
• If the seller dies or disappears in the interim, obtaining their cooperation becomes a serious problem

Perfection — consent, stamping, registration — is part of the purchase, not a follow-up task. Budget for it, schedule it, and do not treat the deed signing as completion.

Step 1: Establish Your Citizenship Position

Nigerian citizens by birth may generally hold dual citizenship, which covers most Nigerian-Americans. Nigerians who acquired citizenship by naturalization face a different position. Non-Nigerians can hold interests in land but face additional state-level requirements in some states.

For most readers this is a non-issue — but establish it before you shop, not during.

Step 2: Learn the Document Hierarchy Before Anyone Shows You One

You will be shown documents. Knowing what each one actually proves is most of the battle. Roughly, strongest to weakest:

• Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) — the state's grant. The strongest single document, but not infallible: there are revoked C of Os, overlapping grants, and outright forgeries.
• Governor's Consent (a consented Deed of Assignment) — where a prior holder's interest has been properly assigned with state consent. For land that has changed hands, this is what you want to see.
• Deed of Assignment — the transfer instrument. Necessary, but on its own it is a contract, not perfected title.
• Registered Survey Plan — fixes the parcel's location and coordinates. Essential, but proves geometry, not ownership.
• Excision and Gazette — where the government has released land back to a community, published officially. Real and meaningful, but frequently misrepresented: people sell "gazette land" that isn't in the gazette, or is in a gazette for a different parcel.
• Purchase receipt, allocation letter, "family receipt" — these are not title. They are evidence that money changed hands. Enormous quantities of Nigerian land are sold on exactly this basis to buyers who think they've bought something more.

If what you're being offered sits at the bottom of that list, that's not necessarily a dealbreaker — but you need to know it, price it accordingly, and understand exactly what it would take to convert it into something registrable.

Step 3: Get the Property Identified Precisely

You need the registered survey plan with its coordinates and survey number — not "the plot beside the filling station in Ibeju-Lekki." Vague property identity is the substrate of most Nigerian land fraud, because it lets the parcel searched differ from the parcel sold.

Step 4: Search the State Land Registry

An independent search at the relevant state's lands registry should establish what is registered against the parcel: the grant, prior instruments, encumbrances, mortgages, and any pending or adverse entries.

Rules that apply everywhere but especially here: the search must be recent, and it must be conducted by your own lawyer, not the seller's, and not accepted as a certificate the seller hands you. Fabricated search results are a well-established part of this market.

Step 5: The Acquisition Check

Separately from ownership, you must establish whether the land is under government acquisition or committed. Large tracts, particularly around Lagos and its corridors, sit under government acquisition. Land under acquisition can be sold to you by someone with genuine-looking documents, and later simply taken, with compensation running to someone other than you — or to no one.

This is checked by charting the survey plan at the office of the state Surveyor-General, which reveals whether the coordinates fall within an acquisition, a road setback, a right of way, an excised area, or a committed zone.

A registry search alone does not answer this question. Both checks are required. A buyer who does one and not the other has done half the diligence and has no way of knowing which half mattered.

Step 6: Confirm the Seller Can Actually Convey

This is where Nigerian conveyancing has its most distinctive trap.

Family land

Much Nigerian land — especially in the South West — is held by land-owning families. Under customary law, a valid sale generally requires the head of the family together with the principal members. A sale by the head alone, or by some members without the head, is legally defective in ways that surface years later. Buyers routinely deal with one confident family representative and assume that's sufficient. It is not.

The related practical problem: even after a legitimate purchase, families sometimes return demanding further "development levies," or dispute the sale through other members. Proper documentation of every required consent at the time of purchase is the only real defence.

Estates

Where the holder has died, letters of administration or probate must actually have been obtained, and the personal representatives properly empowered. Land sold out of an unadministered estate is a recurring source of loss.

Companies

Verify corporate existence and standing at the Corporate Affairs Commission, and confirm the signatory's authority to bind the company to a land disposition.

Estate developers and "land banking" schemes

A company selling plots in an estate must itself have good root of title to the whole. Ask what the company holds, and verify it — not the glossy allocation letter they'll give you. In Lagos, real estate practitioners and developers are subject to state-level regulatory registration; checking a developer's regulatory standing is a cheap, useful signal.

Step 7: Verify the Ground

Someone independent must physically attend:

• The land exists at the surveyed coordinates
• Boundaries match the survey plan
• Who is physically on it — tenants, farmers, caretakers, squatters, an existing structure nobody mentioned
• Encroachment from neighbouring plots
• Actual access — landlocked plots sold with imaginary road access are common
• Construction status and condition, where there are structures

Not the seller's photos. Not a relative doing a favour. A professional with no stake in the deal closing.

Step 8: Match the Paper to the Ground

The parcel your lawyer searched, the parcel charted at the Surveyor-General's office, the parcel on the listing, and the parcel your inspector stood on must all be the same land — compared field by field, coordinates included.

A clean legal report and a clean site report describing two different parcels is a working fraud, not a hypothetical one, and cross-checking them is the only thing that catches it.

Step 9: Contract, Deed and Perfection

Sequence matters:

1. Diligence completes clean — registry search, acquisition check, seller authority, site verification
2. Deed of Assignment prepared by your lawyer, describing the property exactly as surveyed and registered
3. Execution by all necessary parties — for family land, that means every consent identified in Step 6
4. Stamping within the applicable time limits
5. Governor's Consent application, with the associated fees and taxes
6. Registration at the state lands registry

Steps 4–6 above are the perfection process. They cost real money and take real time. Get the estimate up front, in writing, and build it into your budget rather than discovering it later.

Step 10: Money, FX and Payment Structure

Two separate problems here.

Foreign exchange

The naira has moved dramatically in recent years, and that cuts both ways for a US-based buyer: your dollars may go considerably further than they did, but pricing, timing and conversion route materially affect what you actually pay. Many developers now quote in USD. Establish early: what currency is the price actually denominated in, when does the rate lock, and who bears movement between agreement and payment. Get it in the contract.

Payment mechanics

Regardless of currency:

• Money should not sit with the seller before you have what you paid for
• Payment should be staged against verified milestones, especially for anything under construction
• Never send funds to a personal account of an agent, relative, or intermediary "to hold"
• Wire details must be verified through a channel other than the one they arrived on — email-intercept wire fraud is the single largest source of six-figure diaspora losses in every corridor
• Expect and prepare for source-of-funds documentation on significant sums

The relative problem

As in every diaspora corridor: money sent home to a family member to "buy the land" has a way of producing land registered in the family member's name. There is no "we'll transfer it to you later." Title goes in your name, at the time of purchase, or you don't have a purchase — you have a gift.

Step 11: Protecting Land You Don't Live On

Undeveloped land held by someone abroad is a target. Practical steps that genuinely help:

• Perimeter fencing and visible signage
• A caretaker arrangement with someone accountable — documented, not informal
• Periodic inspection, ideally by someone independent of whoever manages it
• Keeping perfection documents current and safely held
• Paying any applicable state land charges and keeping receipts

Encroachment is far easier to prevent than to reverse.

Red Flags

• Land offered on a receipt or allocation letter with no path to registrable title
• A survey plan the seller won't let you chart at the Surveyor-General's office
• Any resistance to an independent registry search
• A seller-supplied search result offered in place of your own
• Family land where you're told the head of the family's signature "isn't necessary"
• One heir selling estate property alone
• Pressure to complete before diligence finishes
• A developer who can't show root of title for the estate as a whole
• The suggestion that Governor's Consent is optional, can be done "later," or that "nobody does it"
• Wire details arriving by email or changing at the last minute
• Prices far below comparable plots in the same area