In Ghana, we have a way of talking about land that sometimes gets us into trouble. We call something “cheap” when really we mean the price was lower than we expected, without stopping to ask why.
I have been in the construction industry for fifteen years now, working across the Ashanti Region, Greater Accra, and the Central Region, and if there is one lesson I keep repeating to clients, it is this: the price on the indenture is not the cost of the land. The cost of the land is whatever it ends up taking from your pocket before the house is finished, and sometimes that figure only reveals itself long after the sale has gone through.
The plot that seemed like good fortune
A client of mine found a plot in the Ashanti Region some years ago. The price fit comfortably within her budget, the location suited her, and by the time she brought me in, she had already paid for it in full.
On paper, everything appeared to be in order. But when we started asking the kind of questions a contractor learns to ask out of habit rather than suspicion, the picture became less tidy. There were chieftaincy related issues tied to that particular stretch of land, the sort of long running disputes that occasionally make their way into the pages of the Daily Graphic or onto the evening news on GTV, and some of the surrounding parcels were held through family ownership rather than the single traditional authority she had assumed was in charge.
One afternoon, after we had already broken ground, some men showed up at the site. They told her they had been contracted by the chief to protect the land from illegal sales, and they were not going to let construction continue until certain documentation issues were addressed. In the end, she had to make an additional payment before work could resume, money she had never planned to spend, on top of what she believed she had already settled in full when she bought the land.
That was the first surprise. The second came from the ground itself. The plot had a gentle slope, nothing dramatic to look at, but once construction began and we had to deal with the levels properly, the substructure cost alone rose by roughly 30 percent above what had been budgeted.
Add it together, and a plot that had looked like a bargain ended up costing her considerably more than a more expensive, better documented plot would have.
Why “cheap” needs a second look, always
I am not suggesting every affordable plot hides a problem. Some genuinely are good value. But experience has taught me that price alone tells you almost nothing about what a piece of land will actually cost you by the time your house is standing.
A plot can be priced below market value for perfectly honest reasons, an owner in urgent need of cash, a family simply wanting to sell quickly. But it can also be priced that way because something about it has made other buyers walk away quietly: unresolved family interests, a boundary nobody wants to argue about, a slope that previous interested buyers noticed and you did not.
The uncomfortable truth is that you often cannot tell the difference just by looking, or even by trusting the person showing you the land. You can only tell the difference by doing the work most people are tempted to skip when a price feels too good to pass up.
A lesson borrowed from professional practice
In my work with the Chartered Institute of Leadership and Governance, Ghana Chapter, one thing we insist on is that certification is never a single event you complete and then forget about. Members are required to accumulate continuing professional development hours year after year, precisely because standards are not something you verify once at the beginning and assume will hold forever.
Land works the same way. Verification is not something you do once, at the point of being charmed by a low price, and then set aside. It continues through the search at the Lands Commission, through the lawyer confirming who actually has the right to sell, through the surveyor walking the actual boundaries rather than trusting the ones described to you, and through asking, honestly, what this land will demand of your budget once building begins.
A cheap price with no verification is not a bargain. It is simply a cost you have agreed to pay later, without knowing the amount in advance.
What to do before the price tempts you
Before you let an attractive price settle the matter in your mind, slow down long enough to ask who else has turned this land down, and why. Get your own lawyer, not the seller’s, to check the documentation properly. Bring someone who understands construction to walk the actual plot with you, not just glance at a site plan. And ask yourself honestly whether the saving you think you are making is real, or whether it is simply a cost that has been moved further down the line, waiting for you after the paperwork is signed and the money has already changed hands.
The land that costs you least is rarely the one with the lowest price. It is the one whose full cost you understood before you paid for it.
This post draws on stories and lessons from my book, From Land to Home: How to Finish Your House on Budget Without Being Cheated. A free companion toolkit, including a Land Due Diligence Checklist to help you verify before you pay, is available at www.asarebediakoadams.com.