The Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Housing, Barakat Odunuga-Bakare, has revealed that the state’s monthly rental scheme will be implemented by the end of 2024 or in early 2025.
She made this announcement during a recent press briefing held by 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 emphasized that the N5 billion designated for the monthly rental scheme remains intact and unused.
She further explained that the slow implementation of the scheme indicates that the Lagos State Government is still working on refining various aspects of it.
She noted, “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.”
In 2021, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu highlighted the inadequacy of the current yearly rental model, particularly in high-demand urban areas where property costs are steep.
He proposed a shift to a monthly rental system to alleviate the financial burden on low- and middle-income earners. Sanwo-Olu put forward this suggestion during the 10th meeting of the National Council on Lands, Housing, and Urban Development in Lagos.
He urged policymakers to explore this approach and develop a regulatory framework to facilitate the transition.
Sanwo-Olu also mentioned that Lagos was in the process of devising modalities for monthly rent to accommodate residents not participating in the state’s homeownership scheme.
He said, “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.”
The then Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, corroborated Sanwo-Olu’s position, stressing that the yearly rental system had created inequality in housing supply and widened affordability gap for low-income earners.