Developing a Composite Property Market Development Index for Nigerian States and Its Application to Investment Strategy

This dissertation develops an original Composite Property Market Development Index for Nigerian states, constructs the index from multi-source data, and demonstrates its applications to real estate investment strategy, policy benchmarking, and academic market analysis. Existing measures of Nigerian property market conditions are either geographically partial, covering mainly Lagos and Abuja, or thematically narrow, addressing single market dimensions such as price or liquidity. A comprehensive state-level index that captures property market depth, efficiency, and accessibility would be a significant methodological contribution to Nigerian real estate analysis. The theoretical contribution defines property market development as a multi-dimensional construct encompassing seven index components: transaction volume and liquidity, market transparency and information availability, institutional quality of land administration, mortgage market depth and access, professional service supply and quality, regulatory environment effectiveness, and the extent of urban-rural market integration. Measurement frameworks are developed for each component, drawing on survey primary data and secondary administrative data for all 36 states and the FCT. Principal components analysis confirms the multi-dimensional factor structure and guides index construction. The resulting state-level index is validated against external benchmarks including World Bank governance indicators and private investment data. Applications developed in the dissertation include investment screening models that use index scores to filter state markets, decomposition analysis that guides policy priorities for market development, and a dynamic monitoring system that tracks index changes over successive three-year periods. The index is released as an open-access data resource for Nigerian property market research. Keywords: property market index, market development, state comparison, investment strategy, Nigeria.