Compliance with Valuation Standards by Estate Surveyors and Valuers in the Akure Property Market, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines the extent to which estate surveyors and valuers in Akure, Nigeria, comply with the Nigerian Valuation Standards (the Green Book) and related international valuation standards in property valuation practice, and investigates the professional, institutional and market-related factors that drive variation in compliance, alongside the implications of non-compliance for the Akure property market. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted. The sampling frame of 35 registered estate surveying and valuation firms in Akure was treated as the sample size, in line with the recommendation that a population below 200 may be sampled in full. Structured questionnaires retrieved from 23 firms (71.9% response rate) were analysed alongside 23 actual valuation reports (2021–2025) submitted by the same firms and bench-marked against the Green Book. Weighted Mean Score (WMS) analysis was used to rank compliance items, factors and strategies; this study extends that approach with coefficient-of-variation (CV) analysis to measure the degree of consensus or dispersion underlying each mean; and a binary logistic regression model was used to assess the influence of non-compliance on property market outcomes. Compliance is strong for fundamental procedural items viz: identification of the valuer and client, purpose of valuation and valuation amount with a procedural-cluster mean of 3.67 out of 5.00 (“Often”), but markedly weaker for technical disclosure items such as assumptions, source of information, extent of investigation and confirmation of standards used, with a disclosure-cluster mean of 2.38 out of 5.00 (“Less Often”). This produces an overall compliance index of 3.21 out of 5.00 (“Sometimes Often”) and a 25.7-percentage-point gap between the two compliance domains. Client pressure, lack of valuation technology and economic pressure are the leading drivers of non-compliance. Binary logistic regression shows that reduced investor confidence (OR = 6.05), inaccurate pricing (OR = 3.49), loan defaults (OR = 3.00) and weak regulation (OR = 2.86) significantly increase the odds of adverse market outcomes attributable to non-compliance; the model implies that the probability of such outcomes rises from a 4.7% baseline to approximately 76.9% when all four significant risk factors co-occur.