Another look at property market maturity framework and its application to Lagos property market, Nigeria

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the framework for determining property market maturity by including the economic characteristics of a country in the measure. Design/methodology/approach: The examination was done in Lagos property market, which was stratified into Mainland and Island markets. A total of 181 estate surveying and valuation firms and 87 property development companies, as represented by top-level managers, participated in the survey. Data were collected on their perception of property market maturity attributes that included market openness, presence of professionals, level of transparency and state of the economy, among others. The data were analyzed using mean rating and mean deviation. Findings: The result showed that “diversity of real estate products and forms” was ranked highly and had reached a mature stage in Lagos Mainland, Island and the aggregated Lagos market. Contrarily, the state of the economy was still at immature stage in Lagos and its sub-markets. Overall, the results showed that the Lagos property market was emerging and that the inclusion of economic features in the maturity framework reduced the level of maturity of the market when compared with previous studies. Practical implications: The study implied that the assessment of the state of economy of a country, as part of the attributes for measuring property market maturity, will impact on the result and should be taken into consideration. Originality/value: The study adds to the previous studies on property market maturity by assessing the impact of the economic characteristics of a country on the measure.