At the Wemabod Real Estate Outlook 2025 event in Lagos, themed “Real Estate Development: A Catalyst for Nigeria’s Economic Recovery,” former Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola and key players in the real estate sector championed the adoption of a monthly rental system in Nigeria.
Fashola, who also served as the Minister of Power, Works, and Housing, emphasized that aligning rent payments with salary schedules could significantly curb inflation, if not reverse it. He stated, “If rents can be paid monthly when salaries are gotten you would see a (positive) change in the economy.”
In agreement, the Group Managing Director of Odu’a Investment Company Limited, Abdulrahman Yinusa, acknowledged that a monthly rental structure would help address the financial gap between employees’ earnings and their housing expenses. He proposed that employers could serve as guarantors, ensuring rent deductions directly from salaries to provide assurance to landlords.
He noted, “There is a gap between employees’ ability to see money and what they want to pay. To bridge the gap, it is the employers that can help by providing a guarantee to the landlords, that when the rental money is due, the employers would deduct from the salaries and fees. That way, the landlords would calm down and know that their money would always come.”
Echoing similar sentiments, Bashir Oladunni, Managing Director and CEO of Wemabod Limited, expressed that the introduction of a monthly rent system would enhance tenants’ ability to fulfill their housing responsibilities. He stressed the necessity for government intervention to establish regulations that safeguard landlords’ interests, especially given the financial burdens associated with property development.
He explained, “The government needs to put in place regulations that would also safeguard the interest of landlords. Property owners also do not have mortgages at a single interest rate. So they must have borrowed to finance the development of those assets, and for any business enterprise, you want to recoup your funds as quickly as possible to be able to develop and build more. It is a laudable idea. It is an institution like Wemabod that can champion such a course, looking at the kind of portfolio that we have and the fact that we are backed by six states of the federation. Furthermore, we are exploring this option as part of our strategic plan to expand our housing portfolio by 500 units over the next five years.”
In 2024, Barakat Odunuga-Bakare, the Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Housing, revealed that the state government was preparing to implement a monthly rental policy before the year’s end or by early 2025. Speaking at a Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority (LASRERA) press briefing in Ikeja, she emphasized the need for a system where rent aligns with tenants’ earnings, a model already practiced in other parts of the world.
She stated, “We all see what is being done in other climes, rents are collected monthly. Hence, we are looking and hoping that before the end of the year, or by early next year, we will be able to implement the policy of monthly rental. Also, the rental would be charged according to tenants’ earnings. The good part about it is that we would be test-running it first within the public sector since we can ascertain how much everybody is earning, and once we see that it works in the public sector, we can now push it out to the private sector.”
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