The Minister of Power, Works, and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has appealed to Nigerian homeowners to review the method of charging rent for their properties to help low-income earners cope with housing demands.
While speaking at the Business Day Real Estate Roundtable and Exhibition programme in Abuja on Thursday, July 5, 2018, the minister urged homeowners to be considerate and charge rent to conform to the economic realities in the country.
Speaking on the theme “Innovative Housing Finance Model as a Catalyst for Home Ownership”, the former Lagos State governor said most low-income working class Nigerians don’t receive their salaries in advance, but in arrears.
He said, “If you ask me to go and bring in advance one year’s rent from what I’m going to earn monthly in arrears, how feasible is that?
“Even my salary as a minister is paid at the end of every month, not even at the beginning; then you the landlord is now asking me to bring next year’s salary, and we’re complaining that there’s corruption.
“I tried to intervene as a governor, passing the resolution to our own council in Lagos then, but the outcome was not peaceful, because there were landlords in our midst.
“Those who get paid weekly pay their rents weekly; those who get paid monthly pay monthly rents.”
The minister reiterated his position by pointing out that all the developed countries being compared with Nigeria don’t operate the same method of collecting rent.
He suggested that there should be a landlord-tenant-employer’s agreement whereby there would be a deduction of rent on a monthly basis from the tenant’s salary.
