Analysis - Nigerians currently have to shell out a whole year's rent in advance. Many renters want this to change, but landlords will need reassuring.
These companies offer a number of services. They help find upwardly mobile professionals with steady incomes to be tenants. Spleet and Kwaba allow renters to take out a loan to pay a year's rent in advance, which the tenants then repay to the company in monthly instalments, much like the Lagos state plan. Rent Small Small offers rent insurance for landlords in the event that tenants are unable to pay. Some of these companies also impose penalties on renters if they are slow to pay.
Chigbo MacDennis, a renter in Abuja, worries that landlords will simply increase rents"in the spirit of higher risk, higher reward". Meanwhile Dominic Itodo, another renter in the capital, suggests that unlike with annual payments, which effectively fix costs for the year, a monthly system provides landlords more opportunities to arbitrarily elevate them."This is Nigeria," he says."With a monthly plan... your landlord can just increase rent after six months.
Some renters also just prefer to pay annually. For instance, Ikenna Obinali, a driver in Enugu state, says he would rather save up and pay his year's rent in one go rather than"scramble around every month to find rent money"."Nigeria is not working," he adds."As you are getting your money you are spending it putting out fires."
Given these varying preferences, Uchegbu argues that any legislation will work best if it is not overly rigid and prescriptive."We are living in a democracy," he says."They should not dictate to someone investing money the frequency at which s/he should collect his or her money back... Flexibility is essential."Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
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