Heuristics research in property valuation had been confined to anchoring and adjustment at the neglect of the
other three, Availability, Representative and Positivity Heuristics. More so, majority of previous studies have
been restricted to Lagos Metropolis. Recently a study was carried out to discover the existence of major
heuristics in two other prominent cities in Nigeria; namely, Abuja and Port-Harcourt. The present study is
aimed at determining the level of application of heuristics in property valuation in the three cities. The study
is a cross-sectional survey and entailed the distribution of questionnaires to 159 Head Offices of Estate
Surveying Firms in Lagos Metropolis and 29 and 39 of such offices in Abuja and Port-Harcourt respectively.
Standard deviation of the Mean of frequency in usage of heuristics in 20 property valuations carried out
reveals that Availability Heuristics is mostly predominant in the three cities: Lagos Metropolis (X=7.93;
a=6.408); Abuja (X=9.94; a=5.651) and Port-Harcourt (X=S.35; a=4.911). The study therefore recommends
that confinement to anchoring and adjustment will result to superfluxity of research and consequently focus
should be on availability heuristics due to its predominance in usag
