Lagos vows to enforce monthly rental policy

 

The Lagos State government through its Special Adviser to the governor on Housing, Barakat Odunuga-Bakare, has said that the state’s monthly rental scheme will be enforced before the end of 2024 or early next year.

Odunuga-Bakare who stated this during a press briefing of the Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority in Ikeja, Lagos said that the rental would be charged according to tenants’ earnings as it is being done in other climes.

She explained that the good part about it is that they would be test-running it first within the public sector since they 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 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.

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.”

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.