For accountant, career coach and SME development specialist Dickson Assan, the frustration of searching for land this year has exposed him to a deeper problem in Ghana’s property market, which is that land is increasingly being treated less as a productive and housing asset and more as a speculative financial asset.
In what he describes as a rant on social media, he notes that his experience of searching across parts of Accra brought him face-to-face with asking prices of GH¢300,000, GH¢500,000, GH¢800,000 and even more for plots, including parcels in areas with little development or infrastructure.
The “roof-breaking” prices he encountered made him ask the question: what exactly are people pricing? Dickson Assan was quick to add that his concern is not that land should have no value. Land is scarce, and where demand exceeds supply, prices will naturally rise.
The Menace of Just Buying and Holding Land
The bigger and deeper problem, he argues, is what happens when landowners can simply buy, hold, and wait. A plot can remain undeveloped for 10 or 15 years without producing anything.
Then a taxpayer-funded road reaches the area, electricity is extended, schools and businesses appear, and population growth pushes development outward. Suddenly, the owner can demand hundreds of thousands of cedis for an asset whose increased value may have been created substantially by public infrastructure and surrounding private development.
He emphasizes that in this situation, the land itself has not necessarily become more productive. The surrounding economy has. Yet the resulting increase in value is captured largely by the landowner.
The Determination of Prices
Assan is particularly critical of how prices are often established in the first place. In a transparent property market, buyers should be able to see what comparable plots have actually sold for recently.
Instead, he describes a market where asking prices can become their own benchmark. He describes the situation in Ghana where one owner hears that another is asking GH¢400,000 and decides his land is worth GH¢450,000. The next owner sees GH¢450,000 and asks GH¢500,000.
Before long, “asking prices begin chasing asking prices”, creating the impression that land is worth progressively more even when there may be relatively few transactions at those levels.
He differentiates that an asking price is what a seller wants. A transaction price is what a buyer has actually paid. When the two are routinely confused, expectations can become detached from reality.
The Consequences of the Situation
Dickson Assan noted that the consequences are not confined to people trying to buy plots. When land becomes more expensive, housing becomes more expensive. Developers must recover higher acquisition costs. Businesses face greater property expenses. Families unable to afford land closer to employment centres are pushed further into the outskirts, where cheaper plots often come with inadequate roads, drainage and other infrastructure.
This results in a vicious cycle where land speculation raises the cost of building, expensive housing pushes workers farther from jobs, and longer distances increase transport costs and congestion.
Dickson Assan is therefore calling for a more transparent land market, including a database showing actual completed land transactions rather than merely advertised prices.
He wants the government to decisively answer the question of whether land should remain an asset that can be bought, left idle and resold at ever-higher speculative prices.
Or should it function primarily as a foundation for homes, businesses, factories and other productive economic activity?
