Barakat Odunuga Bakare, the special Adviser to Lagos state Governor on Housing, revealed that the monthly rental scheme will be implemented before the end of 2024 or early 2025.
She made this known during press briefing of the Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority in Ikeja , Lagos.
She said, “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.”
Odunuga Bakare disclosed that the N5billion naira assigned for the monthly rental scheme was still intact.
She stressed that the considering the time taken for scheme implementations shows that the Lagos State Government was still trying to perfect one thing or the other.
She stressed that, “The last administration that initiated the monthly rental scheme was coming to an end when the scheme was to be introduced. Now, we have a new administration and the governor wants the scheme to come into effect by the end of this year or early next year.”
The Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, in 2021, had said that the current rental model in which people pay yearly rent in advance to property owners has become insufficient to address present realities in the housing sector, especially in cities where demand for property is high and expensive.
The governor supported the monthly rental system, which he said would be affordable to low- and middle -income earners pressured by the yearly rent obligation.
Sanwo-Olu made this known during the 10th meeting of the National Council on Lands, Housing and Urban Development summon in Lagos recently.
The governor said Lagos was already working out monthly rent modalities to accommodate residents not keen on the state’s homeownership scheme.
He noted that, “In Lagos, we operate a very robust rent-to-own programme of five per cent down payment and six per cent simple interest rate payable over 10 years. We are working on another product, which is a purely rental system, where residents will pay monthly.”
Babatunde Fashola, the ex Minister of works and Housing, endorse Sanwo olu’s position, noted that the yearly rental system had created inequality in housing supply and widened affordability gap for low-income earners.
