Housing, Property Technology and Artificial Intelligence: A Conceptual Model of Valuation, Land Administration and Affordability in Rapidly Urbanising Markets
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68854/vp6hsc42Keywords:
housing, property technology, land administration, automated valuation, land registries, housing affordability, urban land markets, tenure security, digital platforms, NigeriaAbstract
Property technology is entering African housing markets as digital land registries, automated valuation, online rental and sales platforms and algorithmic underwriting, in cities where most land is held under informal or customary tenure and most housing is self-built. This conceptual paper develops a model of what these technologies do to housing access. Drawing on urban land economics and housing theory, on the land-administration and tenure literatures, and on recent research on property technology, digital land governance, automated valuation and housing platforms, it distinguishes three functions the technologies perform, establishing what exists (registration), establishing what it is worth (valuation) and matching supply to demand (platforms), and shows that each can widen or narrow access: registration can secure tenure or enable dispossession, valuation can unlock credit or price out the poor, and platforms can reduce search costs or concentrate rents and discretion. The paper develops a framework in which the affordability and tenure effects of property technology depend on the tenure regime into which it is introduced, the regulatory environment, and who controls the data it generates; derives seven propositions about the conditions under which digitisation improves affordability and tenure security for low-income urban residents; and examines the specific risk of automated valuation trained on formal-market data and applied to informal housing. Nigeria's urban land and housing markets, with Lagos as the anchoring case, ground the analysis. The paper closes with implications for land agencies, housing regulators, platform operators and the research agenda of African housing studies. It concludes that property technology is neither inherently inclusive nor inherently extractive but amplifies the tenure regime, the regulation and the data arrangements it meets, so that these conditions must be built before digitisation can improve affordability and tenure security for the urban majority.
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