Tenants Vacate Houses In PH Over High Rents

A real estate and property management consultant, Mr  Eze Akwara Udi has raised concerns over the increasing number of vacant houses due to high rents in Ozuboko community in Port Harcourt City Local Government  Area of Rivers State.
Udi, in an interview with The Tide in Port Harcourt , last  Monday, noted that the houses are vacant due to their former occupants’ inability to pay the increasing cost of rents.
He also explained that the properties were vacated, “because landlords insist on collecting two years rent even for old tenants and most people can’t afford such amount of money especially in this era of recession”.
The real estate and property management consultant stated that a three-bedroom apartment now goes for N1.1m as against N700,000 in the past, while a self -contained apartment has gone up to N350,000, whereas it was N150,000 previously.
He also noted that most people who cannot pay the high rents opted to move into their uncompleted buildings with the intension to spend whatever money they would have used for rent to gradually complete their buildings and later become Landlords themselves.
One of the Landlords, Mr Idasetima  Opuda, in his comments, stated that he was not worried that his houses were vacant, expressing confidence that they would one day be occupied, adding that houses do not  depreciate, “they only appreciate”.
Also, a tenant in the area, Mr Abonyo Benjamin, stated that he was considering vacating his present accommodation at the expiration of his rent as his landlord had increased his rent by 75 per cent, “these landlords want to recoup all the money used in building the house within five years without considering that the houses are not perishable and that the economy is biting hard”. Imagine that my landlord has increased rent again, this time by 75 per cent,  I ’ll have to move out when my rent expires”.

Tonye Nria-Dappa