The policy according to Odunuga-Bakare will require property owners to charge according to their tenants’ earnings.
The Lagos State Government has announced that its monthly rental scheme will be implemented by the end of this year or early next year.
The Special Adviser to Lagos State Governor on Housing, Barakat Odunuga-Bakare, made this known during a recent press briefing of the Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority in Ikeja, ThePunch reports.
The scheme will make tenants pay their rent monthly instead of the current rental model, which requires them to pay a year’s rent in advance.
The policy according to Odunuga-Bakare will also require property owners to charge according to their tenants’ earnings.
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.”
She said the scheme’s slow start is evident that the state government is working to perfect it.
“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 said.
It would be recalled that in 2021, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, advocated a monthly rental system, saying the current rental model was inimical to the current realities in the housing sector.
Sanwo-Olu believes the monthly rental model would be affordable to low- and middle-income earners and ease the pressure of paying annual rent on them.
