BUILD / Real Estate Advisory

Kotu Coastal Land Assembly Advisory

Location
Kotu, The Gambia
Year
2020
Discipline
REAL ESTATE

BUILD advised a private landowner group on assembling fragmented coastal parcels into a single developable holding with defensible title and a staged disposal strategy.

The challenge

Ownership of the coastal strip sat across family holdings, historic leases and undocumented occupation. Boundary descriptions conflicted with survey evidence, and several parcels carried customary claims that were acknowledged locally but absent from formal records. Any development or sale would collapse without a credible title position, and the owners lacked a shared view of value, sequencing and the obligations attached to each parcel.

Our approach

BUILD built a parcel by parcel register combining survey work, title searches, occupancy verification and interviews with community representatives. Each parcel received a risk rating, a resolution route and an estimated timeline. The team negotiated consolidation terms between family members, structured compensation for recognised occupiers and set out a staged assembly plan that released clean parcels first while slower claims were resolved in parallel.

The result

The owners moved from a disputed patchwork to a documented holding with a clear resolution path for every remaining claim. Clean parcels were released to market on schedule, funding the resolution of the more complex titles. The advisory record became the reference document used by lenders, buyers and counsel throughout the disposal programme.

Outcomes

  • Parcel level title and risk register
  • Negotiated consolidation and occupier terms
  • Staged release funding claim resolution
Discuss Real Estate