Across Nigeria’s major cities, rent has become the new nightmare, rising faster than salaries and beyond regulation. From Lagos to Abuja, families are being priced out of their homes as the absence of effective housing oversight fuels arbitrary rent hikes and deepens the urban housing crisis, writes Festus Akanbi

When Mrs. Kemi Adeyemi packed her belongings into cardboard boxes and left her two-bedroom flat in Lokogoma last year, she wasn’t just moving homes; she was surrendering to an economy that had priced her out of her own city.

Her rent had leapt from N1 million to N2 million “in one breath,” she recalls, forcing her to relocate to the outskirts of Zuba, where accommodation is cheaper but daily life is tougher. “I saved on rent and lost on life,” she sighs, a sentiment now shared by countless tenants from Surulere in Lagos to Gwarinpa in Abuja.

Across Nigeria’s urban centres, the story is painfully similar. Rents that once crept up modestly now surge unpredictably, doubling or even tripling within a year, with no clear rule, oversight, or justification. The result is an unregulated rental market where landlords dictate prices, tenants bear the shock, and the government looks on. Behind the drama of eviction notices and last-minute house-hunting lies a deep structural failure: Nigeria’s housing sector is effectively lawless, a free-for-all where market forces, speculation, and weak regulation conspire to make shelter a luxury.

House of Reps to the Rescue

In the midst of this storm, the House of Representatives recently proposed a seemingly bold idea: to cap rent increases at 20 per cent nationwide. The proposal, it said, would rein in arbitrary hikes and give tenants some breathing space. But Nigerians are asking questions: What kind of intervention is this? Is the House seeking to make another law for the shelves, or one that can actually be enforced? And shouldn’t it be thinking of broader, more practical solutions, like tackling inflation and expanding affordable housing, rather than enacting a rule that may never see daylight beyond Abuja?

When Shelter Becomes a Gamble

The average Nigerian tenant now lives in a state of constant anxiety. Inflation has eroded wages, while rents gallop beyond logic. In Lagos and Abuja, the twin epicentres of the housing crisis — the absence of effective rent control laws has allowed arbitrary increases to become the norm. Some landlords raise rents simply because “the neighbour did something,” or because the road has just been tarred. A lack of uniform tenancy regulations means that each state, sometimes each landlord, sets their own rules.

Critics have long argued that without a regulatory framework to moderate rent escalation, the urban housing market has turned into a speculative playground. Developers and property owners, unchecked by valuation standards or oversight, peg rents to inflation or even the dollar, a bizarre practice in a naira-based economy. The result: tenants pay the price for everything from exchange rate volatility to cement costs, even when the building was completed years ago.

Rising Construction Costs, Absent Oversight

It’s true that housing costs are also driven by rising input prices. A 50kg bag of cement now sells for N8,000–N10,000, up from less than N3,000 just a few years ago. Steel, tiles, fittings, and labour have all followed the same upward trend, amplified by exchange-rate instability and logistics bottlenecks. Developers respond by raising rents, often indiscriminately. But in the absence of regulation, there is no oversight to determine whether such increases are reasonable, proportionate, or simply opportunistic.

In more structured economies, rent increases are subject to review boards, cost analyses, or statutory caps. In Nigeria, they’re subject only to the landlord’s mood and the tenant’s desperation. “I had to shut my shop for two weeks just to raise the new rent,” says Chike Nwosu, a tailor in Yaba, whose landlord raised his rent twice in eighteen months. “Nobody cares if your income grows, they just tell you the price and give you a deadline.”

Broken Institutions and Moribund Programmes

The housing crisis also reflects years of failed mortgage and finance policy. The National Housing Fund (NHF), the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), and state-led initiatives like Lagos’ Rent-to-Own scheme were conceived to democratise home ownership. Yet they have been hobbled by bureaucracy, weak enforcement, corruption, and low public confidence. Few workers even understand how to access NHF contributions, while many developers avoid formal channels altogether.

The FMBN, despite recent reforms, still faces credibility issues. Loan processing remains slow, and disbursement volumes remain negligible compared to the scale of national demand. State housing programmes, though well-intentioned, often end up catering to middle-income earners, not the working poor they were meant to serve. The result is a vacuum , a policy void that allows private landlords to dictate market realities unchecked.

How Lack of Regulation Fuels Arbitrary Rent Increases

At the heart of Nigeria’s housing chaos lies a regulatory black hole. The country lacks a unified rent control or valuation framework that could check exploitative practices. State tenancy laws, where they exist, are either outdated or poorly enforced. Lagos, for instance, has a Tenancy Law meant to protect tenants from arbitrary increases, but implementation is weak, and most residents aren’t even aware of their rights.

This lack of regulation has turned public infrastructure upgrades into rent triggers. A newly paved road, a nearby supermarket, or a fresh coat of paint in the neighbourhood becomes justification for landlords to raise rents overnight. Developers and agents exploit this legal vacuum, often colluding to set prices that reflect speculative gains, not actual value. Without a regulatory body or rent tribunal to arbitrate disputes, tenants are left with one option — pay or pack out.

Real Estate professionals have repeatedly called for a national regulatory authority, such as the proposed Real Estate Regulatory Council, to bring sanity to the market. But legislative inertia and vested interests have stalled the bill. In the meantime, unregulated developers, speculators, and informal agents continue to dictate the fate of families.

Both Sides Squeezed, but Tenants Bleed More

To be fair, landlords are not immune to economic strain. Many face soaring maintenance costs, higher property taxes, and rising interest rates on construction loans. But while landlords can transfer these costs through rent hikes, tenants have no such escape route. They absorb every shock, from inflation to fuel subsidy removal, through dwindling disposable income. The unregulated market ensures that landlords’ pain becomes tenants’ burden.

This imbalance, experts argue, is precisely why regulation is necessary. Without oversight, a market designed for shelter becomes an engine for inequality. The absence of valuation benchmarks means that property prices, and by extension rents, are dictated not by cost or utility, but by speculation and greed.

What Must Change

Reform must begin with a clear, enforceable regulatory framework. Nigeria needs a National Tenancy and Rent Control Policy that harmonises state laws, defines fair rent adjustment mechanisms, and establishes rent tribunals for dispute resolution. Caps on annual rent increases, tied to inflation or cost indices, could protect tenants while giving landlords predictability.

The Federal and State Governments must also revamp moribund housing programmes. The NHF and FMBN should be digitised, decentralised, and made transparent, allowing contributors to track payments and access low-interest mortgages easily. Lagos’ Rent-to-Own and similar schemes in other states should be redesigned to truly reflect affordability benchmarks for low- and middle-income earners.

Equally critical is the need for a regulatory council to oversee real estate developers, agents, and transactions. Such a body would set professional standards, curb speculative pricing, and ensure transparency in rent and property valuations. If properly enforced, it would bring discipline to a sector that currently thrives on opacity.

Finally, government must confront construction cost inflation head-on, by supporting local material production, stabilising forex access for manufacturers, and incentivising mass housing projects through tax breaks and land access.

A Nation on the Edge

For now, the housing market continues its unrestrained drift. Families like Mrs. Adeyemi’s and Mr. Nwosu’s live one rent cycle away from displacement, their lives balanced on the whims of unregulated landlords. The cost of inaction is more than economic, it’s social dislocation, mental stress, and eroding trust in government’s ability to protect its citizens.

Nigeria’s rent crisis is not just a story of inflation or population growth. It is a story of weak regulation, failed institutions, and policy neglect, a cocktail that has turned the right to shelter into a speculative gamble. Until regulation brings order, families will keep paying the price for a system that values property more than people.