By Jude Njoku

Mrs Abike Afolyan (not real names) runs a maternity home in Sari-Iganmu, a sprawling slum in the Apapa Local Government Area of Lagos. Her desire to expand the Home led to the search for a bigger accommodation. She registered with one of the Agents  with the sum of N5,000 to retain his services.

A few days later, the agent informed her of a newly renovated tenement building at Amukoko, another sprawling slum in the Ajeromi-Ifelodun LGA. She was asked to pay N3,500 for each of the 12 rooms in the building. Besides being asked to pay for two years upfront,  Abike was also required to part with N70 on each of the rooms as Agency and Commission charges.  This totalled a staggering N1,920,000.

Another prospective tenant who simply identified herself as Alice, gave an account of her plight in the hands of these estate agents. Her words: “Recently, my husband and I decided to rent a residential house in Isolo, Lagos state. After being told that the house was worth N600,000  we made payments to the account. To our surprise the agent paid the money back to our account stating that we are required to pay for two years upfront and an additional N240,000 for the agent and the lawyer who is to prepare the agreement.

“After pleading, the agent decided to reduce the rent to one year but raised the  agency and agreement fees to two years. We decided to forget about the house but after a desperate search for an alternative, we went back to the agent. This time he agreed to collect an upfront rent of one year. He also agreed to collect an agency fee of  one year but insisted that we  pay what he termed ‘refundable damage fee’ which was an additional N200,000”

The plight of Abike and Alice are synonymous with what hapless tenants go through almost on daily basis in the hands of Shylock landlords and their dubious estate agents in Lagos and other Nigerian cities. Although Lagos state, in a bid to curtail these excesses, enacted a new tenancy law, Vanguard Homes & Property observed that the law is observed more in breach than compliance.

The usual argument is that you don’t control what you don’t own; that so long as demand for shelter outstrips supply, the tenancy law cannot effectively be implemented. One noticeable drawback of the law is its inability to checkmate the activities of estate agents. The law did not also spell out how to manage multi-tenanted properties.

•A residential property in Lekki, Lagos

Last year, the Lagos State government came up with a law which set up a body to administer the management of estate agents operating in the State . The law made it mandatory for all estate agency practitioners to be registered and have known addresses where they can be tracked down. Such agents are required to report their activities to a clearing house.

In addition to this, the law stipulates that two members of the Board of Directors of that agency must be qualified estate surveyors and valuers. But like the tenancy Act, this law is hardly enforced unlike the Estate Surveyors and Valuers who have strict and enforceable rules and regulations governing their practice.

For instance, while estate and commissioned rent agents have no scale of fees to guide what they charge per transaction, the professionals valuers cannot collect more than 10 percent of the total rent paid by the tenant.

President of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, NIESV, Mr Emeka Eleh, told Vanguard Homes & Property that it is illegal to collect anything above 10 percent of the rent; and that an estate surveyor can only collect the money from the person who hired his/her services. For instance, if you are engaged by the landlord, you cannot go to the tenant to collect your commission. Similarly, if the tenant is the person who engaged your service, he should pay the agency fees.

NIESV General Secretary, Mr. Kunle Awolaja explained that sharp practices occur mainly in multi-tenanted building which are mostly located in slummy neighbourhoods. Noting that such buildings are very difficult to manage, Mr. Awolaja explained that most agents want to collect all the money at once because of these category of tenants have a penchant to default in payment or renewal of their tenancy on its expiration.

He faulted the agreement fees charged by these agents because, most times, no lawyer is involved in drafting them. The things that are called agreement as not acceptable  in the court of law.

But what is the NIESV doing to sanitise estate agency?  Its President, Mr Emeka Eleh had these to say: “ Part of our plan is to bring agency under control. We intend to have a body separate from the Institution where those who practise only estate agency can register. We are doing so because we feel that so many people are duped on a regular basis by the people who call themselves agents; people let out houses that do not exist, people operate from mobile offices where they can move out once they collect your money.

So, we want to be able to bring practitioners of estate agency under control under one body. We are moving ahead to form that body; we are moving ahead to register that body, we are even moving ahead to sponsor a bill at the National Assembly to ensure that a body of estate agents exists which will be under us and regulated. The idea is get everybody under control, regulate the practice of estate agency for the sake of Nigerians, so that nobody is duped.

If for instance, somebody is letting a house in Surulere or Abuja or anywhere, you will know the person’s office, the person he is acting for, you know the landlord has instructed him, you know his details so that if anything happens, you will have a fallback where you can get the person if anything goes wrong.

In trying to strengthen estate agency, we equally intend to launch a multiple listing service MLS before the year runs out. A multiple listing service is a platform upon which estate agency is practised all over the world. It is a system that enables practitioners in estate agency to list their properties under one platform and once it is listed, all those who are registered with the platform can have access to it.

This is the way we will revolutionise estate agency because it means that only those who are within that platform can have their properties listed in the system. What it does is that if you do not have clear instructions from your landlord, you cannot list the property because only those who have clear instructions from their landlords can list their property; only those who are registered with us or with the system can list their property.

This means that before you can list your property, we will know who you are, where you are trained, your office, we will have references from you. In that way, duping somebody and running away cannot arise.