Japada · to come back
Most people planning a return budget from memory. The documented pattern is that anyone who left five or more years ago is out by a factor of two and a half to four, and finds out at the worst possible moment. Start with the real number. Then let us handle the landing.
The reality check
Answer honestly, guess your budget, then see the gap. And do not assume Lagos: if you have roots somewhere else, check that too. The difference is often larger than anything else on this page.
We scale from verified Lagos figures until we have walked this city ourselves.
Landlords set this. We confirm it per property.
Per month, all in, in US dollars. No wrong answer. This is the whole point of the exercise.
We will email the full breakdown, and tell you which parts of it are negotiable. No newsletter, no drip campaign.
Housing, school, staff and living figures from a Lagos relocation cost guide using Q2 2026 data, reviewed September 2026. Naira converted at ₦1,600 to the dollar. Ranges are estimates, not quotes. Agency, legal and caution fees are the common pattern and we verify the real terms on every property before anyone sends money.
What we do
Everything else on this page hangs off these. We are on the ground in Nigeria, which is the only reason any of it works.
The single most dangerous transaction you will make. You are wiring a year or two of rent to someone you have never met, on the word of an agent from WhatsApp.
The part that exhausts people. Dozens of small, unfamiliar, queue-shaped errands, all of which assume you already know how things work here.
The highest-stakes thing we do, so we treat it that way. Records are informal, valuations are optimistic, and sellers are rarely contradicted by their own books.
How we work
Our fees come from you, openly, agreed in advance. A company paid by the vendor eventually starts working for the vendor, and you would never know which day that happened.
Not rent, not deposits, not purchase funds. You pay landlords and sellers directly. We verify, document and supervise. Anyone offering to hold six figures for you deserves harder questions than we could answer.
Sometimes the property is wrong, the school is a poor fit, or the business is not worth buying. Saying so is the job. A service that only ever agrees with you is decoration.
Ghana and Kenya are coming, and we will not pretend otherwise until we have people there who are as good as the ones we have here. Depth in one place beats a map with pins in it.
Before you go
The returns that hold up are the ones where the financial structure was built before the flights were booked. This is the part we push hardest on, because it is the part that cannot be fixed later.
Assets that pay you monthly regardless of where you sleep, or work you can genuinely keep. Build it in the year before you go, not the year after. Arriving with a lump sum and a plan to invest it locally is arriving as a target.
Nigeria changed its residency test on 1 January 2026 and owning a flat here can now be enough on its own. Meanwhile the country you left may not have released you either.
Domiciliary accounts, realistic rates and timings, and a clean paper trail. Test the route with a real transfer before you depend on it for rent.
Enough reachable from outside the country to get everyone out and housed for a month. Having a way out is what lets you commit properly to staying.
Matters arising
Where to take extra care, where to hold off, and why. Dated, sourced, and honest about how fresh it is. It adds local texture to official government advice rather than replacing it.
The library
Written from here, by people doing it. No sponsored content, nothing written to sell you something you do not need.
Six questions with hard edges. Answer them honestly and you will know whether to move this year, next year, or not yet.
Same family, same standard of living. Lagos costs about $6,150 a month. Kaduna costs about $1,967. The difference in year one is around fifty-nine thousand dollars.
Staying under 183 days used to keep you outside the Nigerian tax net. From January 2026 it does not, and owning a flat here may be enough on its own.
The fantasy is a driver, a big house and staff, on a foreign salary. Some of it is true. The expensive half is the part nobody mentions.
Keeping your foreign job is the strongest position you can arrive in. It is also the one with the most ways to quietly fall apart.
Not a prediction. A parent falls ill, a contract ends, something happens locally. The difference between inconvenience and catastrophe is what you set up while things were calm.
Where we operate
Full service. Housing, landing, schooling, staff, acquisitions.
Network in place, pricing being verified. Join the list and we will tell you when.
Different country, different rules. We will not pretend until we are ready.
Same. Tell us you want it and you help decide what opens next.
Talk to someone
A person reads this, usually the same day. If Japada is the wrong answer for your situation we will say so, and point you somewhere better.