Developing a Theoretical Framework for Real Estate Market Analysis in Sub-Saharan African Emerging Economies

This dissertation develops an original theoretical framework for analysing real estate markets in Sub-Saharan African emerging economies, addressing the fundamental inadequacy of received Anglo-American market models when applied to institutional, informational, and governance environments that differ radically from their origins. Real estate market theory as applied in practice and taught in professional programmes across Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa draws predominantly on theories developed for transparent, institutionally mature, and financially deep markets, yet the markets in which Nigerian estate management professionals operate are characterised by pervasive informality, institutional fragility, high information asymmetry, and complex customary tenure interactions with statutory systems. The theoretical contribution proceeds in four stages: critical review of received real estate market theory identifying its unstated institutional assumptions; comparative analysis of real estate market institutions across fifteen Sub-Saharan African countries using a newly constructed institutional quality index; inductive theoretical development using grounded theory principles from fieldwork interviews with 120 estate market actors across Nigeria; and formal model construction drawing on institutional economics, post-colonial economic theory, and urban land economics. The resulting Sub-Saharan African Real Estate Market Framework introduces novel concepts including the dual formality equilibrium, characterising stable co-existence of formal and informal property markets; the legitimacy-backed tenure bundle, describing the multi-dimensional nature of property security in weak formal institution environments; and the relational transaction network, modelling how social capital substitutes for market institutions in property exchange. Implications for professional valuation practice, investment analysis, and housing policy in Nigeria and across Sub-Saharan Africa are derived. Keywords: real estate theory, institutional economics, Sub-Saharan Africa, emerging markets, property market.