The rate of property
development along the Lekki Expressway corridor is so rapid that the traffic on
the only access road to this axis is gridlocked every morning and evening
during rush hour traffic. The congestion is worsened by the lingering road
repairs and weight of traffic. If you are unfortunate enough to leave home for
the Island or Mainland after 7am, you may spend hours reaching your
destination. On some of the estates on this axis you have nature and human
beings co-existing side by side in some sort of imposed harmony. It is not
uncommon to find crabs and snakes in people’s gardens, on the roads and even
inside the houses. I had to take a client to a property on one of the new
developments in Ajah, and while waiting outside the estate gates, I had a look
around and could have been in a remote village in Kafanchan or Oshun state.
There were goats and chickens running around, naked children blissfully happy
in their God given skins, untarred dirt roads and bush as far as the eye could
see, road side eateries cooking on firewood, and shops set up in every
available space. Yet when you drive through the estate gates, you are
transported into another world with evenly laid out plots and houses with
landscaped gardens. It is sometimes disconcerting to go from one environment to
the other in one second. But the beauty of this type of living is that both
communities feed off one another. Local shops are set up in the local communities
which cater to the needs of estate community. The local community Oba also
ensures some type of security and protection for these new estates.
It appears the
oversupply of new properties in Lekki 1 is causing a glut. There is so much
choice that it is quite confusing for clients as they more than likely have five
or six other agents running around for free, searching for properties for them.
It is so common now for agents to ask if the other agent is the principal agent
working directly for the landlord. If you are not, some agents drop you like a
stone as they can see their fees reducing drastically.
While driving along the
Lekki Express way this week, there was an accident around one of the strangely
large roundabouts, which caused a tail back for about two hours. These
roundabouts are accident hotspots and cause a lot off accidents due to cars
bunching up together to circumnavigate the roundabouts. Although traffic has eased enormously between
the first roundabout at Lekki 1 and the third roundabout at Jakande due to the
widening of the road, the traffic from Chevron roundabout to VGC/Ajah is still
a nightmare
I had to go and look at
a large plot of land for a friend in the UK, who had purchased the land on the
basis that it had been recommended by a good friend! The plots of land were
purchased with the intention of selling them on at a much higher amount in a
year or so when prices should have gone up. Unfortunately it is proving difficult to get
the paperwork. One can still get fairly affordable plots of land nearer the
Free Trade Zone and the closer to Epe that you go. Land there can still be
purchased for under 1million a plot, but be sure that you get all the paperwork
for the land before exchanging any money.
No comments:
Post a Comment