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 Osun 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.
by Caroline Adeola Akinlotan
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