Lamudi Reveals Top 5 Methods of House-Hunting in Nigeria

Whilst traditional house-hunting methods remain popular in Nigeria, local real estate companies are also adapting to the changes in how people are using the web, disclosed by Lamudi.com in its whitepaper on the Nigeria’s Real Estate market, at the weekend.

What are the top five most popular methods of house-hunting in Nigeria? Lamudi provided the answer, revealing that 81% of house-hunters go through the traditional means of approaching real estate agents; 48% others go through online listings, a category Lamudi has been outstanding in Nigeria.

Other thriving means are, newspaper classified, representing 43% of the responses; 38% said they hunt for houses through the ‘word-of-mouth’ while 29% others go through dedicated classified publications.

Meanwhile, a study by Terragon Group, recently, revealed that at the end of June 2014, 63% of Nigerian internet users had bought at least an item online, while Pew Research Centre had also said that 13% of mobile phone owners regularly make or receive payments on their phone.

To this end, Obi Ejimofo, managing director of Lamudi (Nigeria) told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek at one year anniversary of the Platform in Nigeria, that its (Lamudi’s) analytics shows, 30.5% of house-hunters searched for properties using a mobile device between May and October 2014; 43.26% of these visitors to the website used tablets to carry out the search, with 56.74% using other mobile devices.

Obi added that, however, there is still room for growth as 33% of real estate agents believe the internet is often used for house-hunting, and all respondents believe this will increase over the next decade.

He said, “Whilst traditional house-hunting methods remain popular in Nigeria, local real estate companies are also adapting to the changes in how people are using the web. According to Lamudi survey 81% of real estate agents believe that the most popular method for house-hunting remains the using a real estate agent.

“However, just under half believe that online listings are the favoured method with 67% of those asked revealing that they advertise their properties online”.

In the released report, Lamudi expressed confidence in the International Monetary Fund (IMF’s) report that over the next few years, around 70% of the world growth will come from developing countries such as Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Mexico.

The Lamudi boss, said that looking into 2015, the Nigeria’s real estate market will continue to witness increase in the expression of interest from the members of the public and will continue to contribute towards the nation’s GDP.