Sev­er­al years ago, pyra­mid schemes took our coun­try by storm. Many peo­ple were tricked, robbed of their hard-earned monies and de­spite grow­ing con­cerns of fraud, peo­ple con­tin­ued in­vest­ing.

At that time, pub­lic opin­ion was that the peo­ple who were tricked were ei­ther very sus­cep­ti­ble or tru­ly naïve. At one point, I al­so be­lieved that a per­son had to be naïve to ac­tu­al­ly be­lieve these schemes worked so eas­i­ly and so flaw­less­ly that you could prac­ti­cal­ly be­come rich overnight.

It is easy to be­lieve that per­haps these peo­ple are not very smart, or not well ed­u­cat­ed, or have fi­nan­cial con­straints, and as such, will be easy to ma­nip­u­late. No, that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly so; some of these peo­ple are none of those things, they just be­lieve that some things are gen­uine­ly good deals that will prof­it them and they refuse to see any flaw. Af­ter all, there are many peo­ple who be­lieve in the con­cept of “get rich quick”.

Now, I can­not com­ment on pyra­mid schemes or cryp­tocur­ren­cy, but what I can com­ment on are land deals. In par­tic­u­lar, the buy­ing and sell­ing of land as an in­vest­ment idea or op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Re­cent­ly, I met some­one who lived abroad and was con­sid­er­ing re­lo­cat­ing back home. Of course, the per­son was in­ter­est­ed in in­vest­ing in a prop­er­ty for his even­tu­al re­turn and re­quired a deed be pre­pared for the prop­er­ty he wished to pur­chase. There were sev­er­al things that raised con­cern; the land, in par­tic­u­lar, was be­ing sold for a pur­chase price that was akin to high­way rob­bery.

Now, it wasn’t the pur­chas­er who was be­ing robbed, but rather, the ven­dor. The sale was so un­der­val­ued that the own­er might as well have just giv­en it away. The price wasn’t the on­ly red flag; the own­er ad­mit­ted that there was some com­mer­cial busi­ness hap­pen­ing on the prop­er­ty, how­ev­er, he had not ten­ant­ed the prop­er­ty as he lived abroad and had not re­turned in al­most 18 years or so.

I took the time to ex­plain the con­cept of ad­verse pos­ses­sion or squat­ter’s rights, as some peo­ple say. I dis­cussed the le­gal chal­lenges that may arise and the risks in­volved with the sale. I was told with au­thor­i­ty that the pur­chas­er was aware of what he was do­ing and sim­ply need­ed a deed pre­pared and my con­cerns were un­found­ed. Af­ter all, he was get­ting a steal of deal and was not pre­pared to pass it up. Sad­ly, I am sure that this deal is too good to be true.

In con­sid­er­ing in­vest­ing in land, it is im­por­tant to note red flags and weigh the risks of pur­chase.

Of­ten­times, sib­lings joint­ly own acres of land that have not been di­vid­ed, so that each par­ty is un­sure of what por­tion of land is theirs to oc­cu­py. When dis­pute aris­es, a sib­ling or two may con­sid­er sell­ing their share while the oth­ers hold on to theirs. Usu­al­ly, the sale price would be at­trac­tive and some­one who has cash read­i­ly avail­able may be will­ing to pur­chase im­me­di­ate­ly. What most peo­ple don’t re­alise and are not ad­vised on, is that you’re pur­chas­ing in­to what can evolve in­to a land dis­pute.

When deal­ing with acres of un­di­vid­ed land, there will al­ways be parcels that are more valu­able than oth­ers. In­stead of sub­di­vid­ing in a fair man­ner, there are some­times one or two own­ers who would sim­ply start oc­cu­py­ing or fenc­ing the most valu­able parcels to en­sure op­ti­mum ben­e­fit to them­selves. This is a dis­pute wait­ing to hap­pen.

There are al­so count­less in­stances of peo­ple liv­ing abroad who nei­ther mon­i­tor nor main­tain their lo­cal prop­er­ties. At some point, they be­come anx­ious to sell. What they would not men­tion is the peo­ple who have been tres­pass­ing on their lands or who have pro­ceed­ed to con­struct a struc­ture.

Some pur­chasers are pru­dent and will do a site vis­it and speak to peo­ple on the prop­er­ty; oth­ers may look from the road and be­lieve the struc­ture ex­ist­ing is the landown­er’s. Tak­ing time to ob­serve prop­er­ly or even ask a few ques­tions from peo­ple on the land can save one un­nec­es­sary dif­fi­cul­ty in the fu­ture. Re­mem­ber, ti­tle search­es on land on­ly tell at­tor­neys who the le­gal own­ers are, it does not tell whether there are squat­ters or there is a third par­ty who has some oth­er in­ter­est.

I have al­so re­alised that many peo­ple now opt to pur­chase land from peo­ple who are ex­ecu­tors of es­tates. There are in­stances when an ex­ecu­tor can sell land to pay off debts of the es­tate, but this is the ex­cep­tion, not the norm. Ex­ecu­tors now be­lieve they do not need to be mind­ful of a will or the law and deal with the land as they see fit and ig­nore the rights of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries. This can re­sult in a le­gal dis­pute and hav­ing any sale ef­fec­tive­ly set aside by the court.

When it comes to in­vest­ing mon­ey, we need to be more vig­i­lant. Should a deal ap­pear too good to be true, then per­haps it is. It is im­por­tant to en­sure that ti­tle search­es are done, site vis­its are car­ried out and ques­tions are asked of both your at­tor­ney and the ven­dors.