Rentsmallsmall, a real estate firm, has unveiled a flexible payment plan for teeming tenants in the country. This is in line with its mandate to make rent and house ownership in the country affordable and accessible to Nigerians, a real estate firm,
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of the firm, Tunde Balogun while the press, enumerated the litany of challenges tenants go through in metropolitan Lagos. According to him, statistically, over 15 million people live in rented apartments in Lagos, a state which has one of the highest rent-to-income rates in the world.
Balogun in his assessment of renting and securing accommodation in the country opined that his company has set out to provide affordable and easily accessible houses for Nigerians with a flexible payment plan for the rent, a scheme he succinctly describes as a deviation from the current practice where house owners demand a one-year or even a two-year rent.
According to him, “We have developed this platform to give Nigerians especially the young professionals the ability to pay their rents flexibly, as against paying upfront.
“And Lagos has one of the highest rent-to-income rates in the world. From our research, cities like New York and Hong Kong, collect up to 59 to 60 percent. People pay their income to their rent. Lagos is around that as well. This is common on the Island because everybody has just kind of settled in but things are not supposed to be like that,” Balogun said.
Miffed at the agency and legal fees often charged on rents, Balogun said that his company will eradicate such charges, as such is not obtainable in most parts of the developed and developing world. He said that RentSmallSmall.com provides a unique win-win situation for both tenants and property owners, creating a platform for an on-budget housing and flexibility in lease and rent payment either on monthly, quarterly and annually basis.
“With Rentsmallsmall, there is no agency, no legal fee. What we do is to get the base rent from the landlord. We mark it up by certain percentage which still makes sense at the end of the year because by the time you add the agency and the legal fee to the base rent, and mark it up to the base rent, you will find out that Rentsmallsmall still gives advantage”.
He pointed out that the scheme, by and large, is also advantageous to landlords who may see it as a demerit. He added that the company also provides an insurance scheme to cover for the fears and any impending loss to landlords.
He said: “We have created incentives for the landlords to get them buy into the model. Remember I said we mark up the base rent. What Rentsmallsmall earns is very little. After the mark-up, we give the majority to the landlords. So, what the landlords get at the end of the year together is higher than what they usually get if they are collecting upfront.