Commercial property investment which is now very evident along Oyemekun
Road, Akure, Nigeria, a place characterized hither to by residential development, leaves
investors at dark with the choice of commercial property investment. Commercial
properties evident in the study area are purpose-built office space, converted office space
and shopping complex. In a bid to lead investors aright on the best decision of the t ype of
property to invest their hard earned income in, a study was conducted to assess the trends
in rental values of the properties between 2006 and 2011 in order to discover the property
with the highest trend. This study which is a cross-sectional research that entailed the
survey of the entire 22 Estate Surveying Firms in the study area made use of
questionnaires as the primary source of data. The use of both descriptive and inferential
statistical techniques such as the frequency distribution table and the simple linear
regression, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were adopted in analysing data. From the
study it was discovered that the converted office space is mostly predominant (53%) while
the shopping complex is the most professionally managed prope rty (46%) respectively.
However, the purpose built office space with the highest R
2
of 0.9 and having the highest
trend in rental values will result to the fastest recoup of investment. The use of (ANOVA)
coupled with Tukey post-hoc test reveal that the rental values of three properties at the
95% confidence level are significantly different (p=0.000). Based on the study findings, it
is recommended that the purpose built office space with the highest rent and trend should
be the focus of both investors and professional managing agents in order to maximize
returns.