The mortgage process is as follows.
Save a deposit
You will need some sort of deposit to put down on any home you are looking to buy. The amount of money you need to put down varies. It can be as little as 5% to over 50%. This is dependent on the property owners and the financing institutions, so you would do well to ask around some of these mortgage banks to get an idea of requirements.
Look for house buying schemes
There are various schemes in Nigeria that can help you buy a home. For example, you have the National Housing Fund which aims to provide better financing solutions to contributors of the scheme (more on this in a section below).
Make sure you can afford a mortgage
Knowing that you can afford a mortgage loan is essential. Mortgages are not short term commitments. A mortgage is something that you will need to be committed to for a number of years ahead, so you need make sure you do your research properly in order to get the best results. Simply subtract your monthly expenses from your income to see how much you can pay towards a mortgage each month. Banks also have mortgage calculators on their websites.
Start looking at properties
After you have saved a deposit and looked at the various mortgage offerings from banks. You will then need to look for a home that can be financed through a mortgage. This links back to our introduction where it was said that mortgages are more readily available in Lagos and Abuja.
Abuja in particular is a planned developing city. This means two things. One, that land is properly documented and two that new homes are being built on a large scale. Most of these new build homes will have mortgages or payment plans in place.
Obtain a mortgage loan
Now that you have a deposit and know what you will be able to afford as monthly payments, it’s time to finalize a mortgage on a property. As outlined before, hopefully you would have already done some research on some primary mortgage institutions. You may even have had preliminary discussions with a few of these banks.
You now simply take it to the next step with formal talks leading on to the signing of papers and you getting the keys to your new home.