Buying land in Nigeria today is a clusterfuck, and Lands.ng is an online marketplace that has set out to bring some order to the chaos, and in the process make buyers’ and sellers’ lives that much easier. They launched on March 16 after a 3 month beta and you can sign up today to get started. And speaking of sign ups…
This is the SignUp/Login page where both Professional agents, and individuals can register before they use the site. After that, they can each register as many pieces of land as is theirs to sell, and like any other classifieds, potential buyers can comb through the pool of listings to find something they like. As soon as they do, they can reach out to the seller to make the purchase outside the Lands.ng platform.
The problem with doing business this way is the potential for scammers and other unsavoury individuals to list non-existent properties on the platform. Lands.ng is addressing this by verifying every single piece of land before they go live on the site. I think this is fine at the moment, but it doesn’t look like a very efficient/scalable model to adopt in the long term.
I saw a “Premium Listing” section on their site, so that tells me their business model revolves around sell priority listing to sellers looking to offload their merch really fast. That is, asides from serving ads to site visitors.
Here’s your bit of trivia for the day: only around 25% of Nigeria’s landmass has been developed. Is there a massive opportunity here for Lands.ng? Without a doubt. Will they succeed in taking advantage of it? We’ll have to stay tuned to find out.
