Lack of access to formal land and strenuous regulations guiding land acquisition have hampered housing development in Lagos state. These are mostly resulted from inadequate provision for land, tendency towards over regulation and administrative and institutional framework that are hostile to the people. The resultant effect of which is shortage of housing supply and development of slums. It is against this background that this study aims at assessing formal land ownership and housing development in Lagos, Nigeria. In order to ensure adequate coverage, data were obtained from the respondents using multi- stage stratified random sampling. A total of 2054 questionnaires were administered in the 16 urban local government areas that make up the metropolitan Lagos to obtain information on the socio economic characteristics, housing types and means of land acquisition. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to present the result. Findings revealed that most low income earners were excluded from the land allocation process by stringent financial measures and institutional ineptness. The paper therefore recommends among other things that government needs to ensure improvement in land administration so as to allow unhindered access to legal security of tenure on residential land in the state.
