Lagos Government Set to Implement Monthly Rent Policy

Lagos State Government says it is perfecting the modality for implementing its proposed monthly rent policy to relieve tenants in the state.

It promises to start enforcing the policy before the end of this year, or early 2025.

The state governor’s special adviser on housing, Barakat Odunuga-Bakare, announced this at a media briefing on the Lagos state real estate regulatory authority.

The special adviser explained that the policy would be first test-run in the public sector, before extending it to the private sector.

Recently, former Governor Raji Fashola advocated the enforcement of the policy to save tenants in Lagos from multiple-year rent being demanded by landlords in the state.

Odunuga-Bakare reiterated that the N5bn allocated for the monthly rental scheme was still set aside and untouched.

She added that the fact that the scheme was slow to take off showed that the Lagos State Government was still trying to perfect one thing or the other.

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She noted 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.

Recall that in 2021, the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, had said the current rental model in which people pay yearly rent in advance to property owners has become inadequate to address contemporary realities in the housing sector, especially in cities where demand for property is high and expensive.

The governor advocated a monthly rental system, which he said would be affordable to low- and middle-income earners pressured by the yearly rent obligation.

Sanwo-Olu made the recommendation at the 10th meeting of the National Council on Lands, Housing and Urban Development held in Lagos recently.

He urged policymakers to consider the suggestion and initiate a regulatory framework that would aid the transition to a new rental system.

The governor said Lagos was already working out monthly rent modalities to accommodate residents not keen on the state’s homeownership scheme.

He said, In Lagos, we operate a very robust rent-to-own program of five percent down payment and six percent 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 the housing supply and widened the affordability gap for low-income earners.