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By Emmanuel Adeleke
The Special Adviser to Lagos State Governor on Housing, Barakat Odunuga-Bakare, has revealed that the state’s monthly rental scheme will be enforced before the end of 2024 or early 2025.
Odunuga-Bakare made the disclosure during a press briefing organised by the Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority, in Ikeja, Lagos.
“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,” she said.
Odunuga-Bakare reiterated that the N5 billion allocated for the monthly rental scheme is still available.
She added that the delay in the take off of the scheme indicated that the Lagos State Government was still trying to perfect everything.
“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,” she added
Recall that in 2021, Governor 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.
