Surveying & Built Environment Vol. 22 Issue 1 (December 2012)

SBE
42
Good Property Valuation in Emerging Real Estate Markets? Evidence from Ghana
have limited amount of information
about property transactions in Ghana.
One reason is that the land registries are
few, compared with the population of
the country (about 25 million people).
Also locating the registries in only
regional capitals, although there are
over 350 urban areas in Ghana (Owusu,
2005) creates problems of accessibility
for the majority of the urban population.
The Chief Registrar of Land has noted
several other reasons. The fees are
deemed too expensive by most people,
especially when they have to pay
registration fees in addition to stamp
duty. Also, the institutional capacity of
the supporting land sector agencies is
weak. Hence, the preparation of basic
cadastral plans can take as long as 12
months. Also a majority of people do
not understand the need for so much
paper work (Sittie, 2006). Further,
there is some evidence (Aryeetey et
al., 2007, pp. 50-51) that, contrary to
claims by the Title Registry that it deals
with cases in a fair and expeditious
manner, there are delays, red tapeism
and corruption plaguing the registry.
Finally, even when information in the
land registry is available to valuers,
questions of how recent the data are
may arise, as in how to use information
registered in 1986, 1996, or even 2006
for a valuation in 2011.
In principle, the problem of lack of
data may be ameliorated by using
information from the processes of
compulsory acquisition of landed
property. In Ghana, the state often
acquires the allodial interest through
compulsory acquisition under the
State Lands Act 1962 (Act 125),
Administration of Lands Act 1962
(Act 123), Statutory Way Leaves Act
1963 (Act 182), or the current (1992)
Constitution (Abdulai, 2010). Between
1850 and 2004, the state executed
1,336 instruments to compulsorily
acquire land. It did so in all the ten
regions of Ghana. The regions with
the greatest share of compulsorily
acquired lands were Greater Accra
(34.1 per cent), Western (26.7 per
cent), Ashanti (13.3 per cent) and
Brong Ahafo (10.1 per cent) (Larbi
et al, 2004, pp.121-122). According
to article 271 of the Constitution of
Ghana, fair and adequate compensation
must be provided promptly for any
land that is compulsorily acquired. The
principle of land law as established in
Nii Kpope Tsuru v Attorney General
and Nii Amotia v Ghana Telecom
is that the requirement to make the
payment of compensation condition
precedent for compulsory acquisition
has no retrospective effect. In earlier
constitutions, the state had to pay
compensation but it could do so after
acquiring the land.
So, the requirement to pay
compensation whether pre- or post
compulsory acquisition has long been
established in Ghanaian land law.
Evidently, that opens up an avenue
to obtain information for valuation
purposes. In valuation parlance, the
usual basis of compensation is the
deprival value concept or the notion
that compensation is equivalent to
how much it would cost to reinstate
expropriated persons to the condition
in which they were prior to losing their
land (Johnson et al., 2000). Assuming
the subject land was useful for farming,
estimating compensation on this basis
requires accounting for crops lost as
well as incidental costs such as the
cost of relocation. Often, contestations
of the adequacy and fairness of
compensation in land courts lead to