Paulyn Properties is a Nigerian real estate practice. We help people buy land, houses, apartments and farmland, and we help them do it without losing money to the problems that make property buying in this country harder than it should be.
Most of our clients come to us in one of two situations. Either they have saved for years and are about to make the largest purchase of their lives with no clear idea of what to check, or they have been offered something that sounds too good and they want somebody to look at it properly before they pay. Both are reasonable places to start, and both are better than the alternative, which is finding out afterwards.
What we do
We source and sell land and residential property across several Nigerian states, arrange site inspections so buyers can stand on the ground before committing, and guide buyers through the documentation that turns a payment into ownership.
That last part is where we spend most of our time, because it is where most Nigerian property purchases go wrong. A receipt is not a title. An allocation letter is not a deed. A deed that is never registered leaves you holding a private agreement rather than a recorded interest. We would rather slow a transaction down and get the paperwork right than close it quickly and leave a client exposed.
How we work
We expect you to verify. We encourage every buyer to instruct their own lawyer, not ours, and to commission their own licensed surveyor to walk the beacons. If a seller or an agent discourages you from doing either of those things, that tells you something important, and it applies to us as much as anybody else.
We put costs in writing. The advertised price of a plot is rarely the amount you need. Survey, deed preparation, development levies, registration and consent all cost money, and buyers who are not told about them in advance are the ones who end up stuck halfway with an unregisterable plot. We would rather give you an uncomfortable total at the start than a series of surprises later.
We pay attention to the ground, not just the paper. Drainage, slope, flood history, access in the rainy season and borehole depth all change what a property is worth and what it will cost you to build on. These things do not appear on a survey plan.
We prefer boring transactions. Inspect, verify, pay by transfer into a company account, sign a proper deed, register the title. Done in that order, buying property in Nigeria is unremarkable. Done out of order, it becomes one of the stories everybody has heard.
Where we operate
Our activity is concentrated in Lagos and the Ogun corridor, the South East around Enugu, Owerri, Awka and Aba, the Delta axis around Asaba, farmland in Oyo, and the Federal Capital Territory. Different markets work in different ways: Lagos turns on excision and acquisition status, the South East turns on family and kindred consent, and Abuja turns on whether a plot is a federal allocation or an Area Council paper. We think local knowledge matters more in Nigerian property than almost anything else.
Why we publish guides
The guides section of this site now holds dozens of long, free articles on how property buying actually works here: what a Certificate of Occupancy is and what it does not protect you from, how Governor’s Consent works, how to read a survey plan, what a land registry search covers, how the common scams operate, and what buying costs once every fee is counted.
We publish them because the single biggest cause of loss in this market is not fraud, it is buyers who did not know which questions to ask. An informed buyer is easier to work with, completes more often, and does not come back angry. That is good for them and good for us.
You are welcome to use those guides whether or not you ever buy anything through us.
Who runs it
Paulyn Properties is run by Pauline Nnabuihe, who also writes the guides published on this site.
Talk to us
If you want to discuss a purchase, arrange an inspection, or get a second opinion on a property somebody has offered you, get in touch. Call or message 0806 525 5056, or email info@paulynproperties.com. Asking a question costs nothing.