BUSINESS DAY NG
Lagos, Nigeria’s sprawling city and commercial nerve centre, is a good case study of a city where house rent situation is dire. This is a city where rent increases have become an obsession among landlords. It is the first of the top 10 African cities with the most expensive rent. Its rent index is about 21.8.
The landlords who increase their rents are, however, responding to unending demand from an expanding population and fast-paced urbanization both of which are exerting enormous pressure on the city’s infrastructure and grossly inadequate housing stock.
A report published by Pison Housing Company in 2009 estimated that over 60 percent of the Lagos population lived in rented accommodation, spending about 50 percent of their monthly income on house rent. This report is no linger tenable and the figure has shot up significantly.
A more recent report on the State of the Nigerian Real Estate Market says 80 percent of the city’s population now lives in rented accommodation, putting the city’s share of the 50 percent of Nigerians who are either homeless or live in inadequate shelter at about 20 percent.
Concerned about this housing situation, the state government came up with two separate tenancy laws which, it explained, were aimed to regulate payment of rents and, in the process, protect both the landlords and tenants from exploitation…
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