The newly built community on the water houses some of the nation’s wealthiest people, and expats, too

Banana Island, which is Nigeria’s answer to Paris’s Seventh Arrondissement, San Diego’s La Jolla, New York City’s Tribeca and Tokyo’s Shibuya and Roppongi, is a small man-made island in the Ikoyi neighborhood of Lagos.

Completed in 2000, it’s a billionaires’ paradise populated by the country’s richest and most well-known families, who savor its quiet, peaceful atmosphere far from the clamor and crowds of Lagos, the country’s largest city and financial center.

Its name comes from its distinct shape.

Boundaries

The 1.63-million-square-meter sand-filled island in Lagos Lagoon is a little more than 5 miles east of Tafawa Balewa Square, the commercial and ceremonial heart of Lagos. A dedicated road connects it to a network of roads near Parkview Estate. First Avenue in the north and Second Avenue in the sound merge and run around its perimeter.

Price Range

As in the rest of the country, real estate prices on Banana Island are based on the value of the land, which according to Roberta Nouboue, managing director of Madingwa Real Estate, is NGN400,000 (US$1,101 per square meter).

Mr Adekunle George-Taylor (Director at Khugtay Group) said prices for detached houses, which rarely come on the market because there are not many on the island, start at NGN1 billion (US$2.75 million). The most expensive listing now on the market, NGN5 billion, is for a six-bedroom detached house on 2,600 square meters of land, she said.

She added that four-bedroom, single-family terrace/townhouses that are on average 400 square meters and are on 1,000 square meters of land generally range from NGN350 million to NGN500 million.

One current listing, she said, is for NGN750 million. That’s the price for each of the twin townhouses on 600 square meters of land.

The island also has three prominent condo developments: Ocean Parade

“There are more apartments and terrace houses than detached single-family homes because land is so scarce and land prices are so high,” Ms. Nouboue said. “Most of them are owned by individuals and rented out to tenants who pay NGN25 million to NGN30 million annually.”

She said it’s possible to buy a unit for about NGN363 million “because value has dropped significantly in the last three years with the devaluation of the naira. It’s illegal to market real estate in anything but naira.”

Of the three condo developments, Ocean Parade is considered the most top-notch, she said, because of its many amenities, which include tennis courts, an Olympic-size pool, two gyms and children’s areas.

Housing Stock

As originally planned, Banana Island was to be an uber-exclusive enclave of single-family detached estates divided into 535 property plots that ranged from 1,000 to 4,000 square meters. House heights were to be capped at three stories.

The first homes were built on the south side of the island, but as land prices skyrocketed through the years, high-rise condo developments were built on the north side, which also houses the area’s commercial corridor. There are three mixed-use high-rises—the Adunola, the oldest, and Lakepoint Towers and Desiderata, which were built in the last two years.

“The first houses that were built are in British and Dubai traditional styles,” Mr Adekunle George-Taylor said. “They are very ostentatious and have nice gardens. The newer ones are more modern, with straight angles, and they are less elongated. Khugtay Group consists of Khugtay Construction Services, Khugtay Nigeria Company, Ceekutay Enterprises and to mention afew.