The curious case of house hunting in Lagos.
“I’ll see 3 or 4 places, make a pick from them. At most, I should wrap this up in two weekends. I don’t think my tastes are that…
“I’ll see 3 or 4 places, make a pick from them. At most, I should wrap this up in two weekends. I don’t think my tastes are that exorbitant or rare. I’ll find a place, tops, two weekends of searching”
These were some of my “assumed, ill researched, stubborn” thoughts despite advice of many which were contrary. I had also seen tweets that described the “ghettoness” of securing an apartment in Lagos. I ignored this general opinion because “finding an apartment is not rocket science”. However, in retrospect, I think I underestimated the direness of the entire situation, or how upsetting it could actually be. In my defense I had house hunted a while ago in early 2017, maybe that was why I felt the cries around house hunting were so overstated; oh my dear, was I proven wrong ; It’s so much worse.
In 2017, I had been “lucky” with my house hunting experience. I didn't have to gather and save the phone numbers of so many agents or go through 36 house inspections. Looking back, I wouldn’t say I made the best choice in 2017 or was particularly lucky in picking my old apartment, as the flooding situation that chased me away was just as bad now as it was then. The upside was that I just needed to move closer to work.
Now to present day, I had a long list of reasons I needed to move, one being the fact that I was tired of fixing the air conditioner of my car (almost 4 times in one year due to flooding). Before my car, It was mostly the car hailing drivers of Uber and Taxify (now Bolt) who would swim in the erosion laden roads to my apartment gate, the previous years; It wasnt costing me Mechanic money.
Now to the problem that chased SpongeBob out of Bikini Bottom: Late October, a week after the ill fated shootings at the Lekki Toll during the #Endsars protest, a consistent theme of civil unrest I personally tagged- “Baale wars” erupted at Igbo-efon, Lekki where I was residing at the time. There were lots of fighting and shootings and whatnots. Somehow before I knew it, there was an “area curfew” inside the already existing state curfew and one had to be home and indoors by 7pm. Shops in the area rushed to close up really early and there were even mini roadblocks created by “Agberos” or “Omoniles” . Frankly, I was tired of these constants bouts of unrest & fighting that were now becoming the “new normal” in the area. I had planned to move in January 2021 when my rent would elapse (Thank God I didn’t wait till January), but the constant fights sped up my resolution. I felt unsafe and the unrest was too close to home; it was time to mueeeeve… so I decided to start house hunting.
To be honest, I thought to build a “standard house” one had to involve designers and have some sort of plan into making a house worthy of the price tag, apparently not in Lagos. My ideas for my new place was simple: A great estate, a serviced apartment, moderate flooding (YESSS) with okay roads (PS. Almost everywhere floods in Lekki) and definitely not a ground floor (if you know, you know). And yes, the windows, finishing and lightening should be modern. With this in mind, I set out on my journey of discovery and oh did I discover many things.
House hunting in Lagos is a full time job where you have to deal with the very frustrating set of people; house agents. So, my real job is demanding, very, and it takes a lot of my time. So I didn’t get why house agents would insist on house inspections on weekdays and decline on weekends; it didn’t make sense. How do you leave your job every 2 hours to go inspect an apartment that would disappoint you? Haba! This was such a strange decision by some of the agents because I assumed for the rent they were putting up on these houses, they expected the potential tenants to have jobs eh? Well what I mostly did was gather enough vendors during the week and book them for weekend inspections. I would book up to 10 or 15 because eventually, almost half of them usually cancelled for the weirdest reasons.
Still on this agent matter, we move on to the next agenda; agent fees. As a Nigerian, one of the things I factored into paying agency fees was owning a car and burning fuel to see ridiculous apartment. My 2017 experience measured against my present experience showed this up. Then, I would be requested to pay agent fee even after “biking” (paying for their okada rides) these men. But this time around, I was fully ready for them — There was one agent whom after showing me a two very “Tiny-no-hope-for-air” 2 bedroom apartment at Ikate (This was after waiting almost an hour for him) not only demanded that I paid him agent fee but also insinuated that since I was driving towards his direction I could drop him at a junction close to his place (wahala be like bicycle). I parked immediately along the expressway and told him to alight after making it clear I was paying him nothing since I got no value. I was frustrated at both his apartments and his inability to be reasonable.
Now the apartment wasn’t really terrible but it was a cubicle, it was really so small that I am hardly sure 2 people would be able to walk side by side from the living room corridor that led to the room area (imagine queuing to move around in your own house). It gets worse, I think the living room had two very tiny windows, with one opening directly to the fence (beautiful view innit?). The house was tight; the exact opposite of what I told him. He showed me another one I’d rather not talk about. There were so many different colors of tiles, I’m sure someone might have mistaken it at least once for a mosaic art showroom. There was no way on Earth I was even going to consider an art experiment gone wrong as my living space. I was frustrated at the lack of initiative by these homeowners. I was even more frustrated at the “anyhowness” of these agents.
Having great friends is one of the gifts of life and your house search becomes a little bit easier if you have friends not only sending you links and tips to great places but at same time following you for the inspections in order to weigh the pros and cons of a place. Inspections after inspections could become laborious which may result in settling for a place that doesn’t meet 89% of your criteria. Having a voice that holds you accountable to your earlier convictions and keeps you in check. Don’t settle, and take a friend along. And yes, you should only be at a place that offers you 89% of what you set out for.
Personally the things I wanted to get right was
The finishing & the windows had to be modern;
The Tiles & Wardrobe must not be fighting itself with dreadful colors (who wants their house looking like their 2 year old niece did the decor?);
A serviced estate (Great exteriors )
The bathroom had to have a bit of room, in fact, I needed space everywhere (A man can dream)
Not the ground floor… again, if you know you know.
No flooding, or if there would be, let the roads be great and tarred.
Back to the state of houses I saw, it was not all bad. There were some I saw online that seemed to tick all my boxes but the prices on these homes were above my budget (soup wey sweet, na money cook am).
I was determined to get what I want at my budget or slightly above (something about cutting your coat according to your cloth not size), because as for me, I believed that Jesus would intervene.
There was another thing I noticed, Terrace houses were being split and changed from the original plans these houses were designed for. There were three effects to this, the houses became disfigured, laying of pipes and remodeling of these homes meant that the walls would suffer in years to come and occupants have to share one central door in what was not designed as a shared apartments. Lagos would shock you with these inventions.
I understand the need to make do because of the ever rising demand for accommodation in Lagos but why not build low cost housing for the middle class. This has a larger market share in the end but hey I’m not in Real Estate, I’m pretty sure they see something we don’t… or not.
Another interesting trend I noticed was that, there would be apartments that are anywhere from 60% to 70% completed, and the agent would tell you the missing piece to making it 100% is your hard-earned rent money. Frankly, I don’t have any advice for this. It would depend on your risk appetite, the amount of lucky charm you possess and maybe how good you can write a police petition (For when things go south). It’s a risk I wouldn’t take, and did not. It worked out perfectly for my colleague and no, he’s not a real estate guru.
Deviating a bit, a very interesting thing to note is that if a house is very cheap compared to the others in the vicinity, lol Run, you’re not that lucky dear. You’ll end up regretting it. A myriad of things could be wrong with it. It's never normal.
Very close to the end of my search, I got an advice which bordered on settling. This was the advice: find a place that is 60–70 percent your spec and then invest your money to make it look like the 100% (i.e. in parts where I can fix like the tiles and finishing etc). It seemed like the smartest advice and I had not thought of it at all. I felt that since I would pay the rent, the apartment had to look like what I wanted. I missed the all important factor that landlords don’t read minds (unfortunately). I finally found something really close to what I wanted; it had almost everything but there were 2 problems, it was the ground floor and it was slightly above my budget. Although with the former I had learnt that in Lagos, nobody wants the ground floor in a really good place and once a spot opened up upstairs, one of the existing floor occupants moved in or up.
During my sojourn, I also discovered the elusive reasons that make getting a decent place difficult in Lagos i.e. bar pricing. One of these reasons was that people almost never moved out from a good place ( I mean everyone knows how difficult it is to house hunt, so if I have a decent or semi decent place, why move?). Another reason was that people hardly emigrated from Lagos to other cities, so the retention factor is really high. Let’s not forget that the migration rate into lagos is ridiculous (I blame Nollywood and their Lagos makes people rich scripts; influenced me too). There were cool estates that I never saw a single opening online for, the entire year. Of course, people moved out, but neighbors simply called their friends immediately they saw a truck pull up. In some cases, the people moving out (Usually Japa-ing out of Naija) called their friends and acquaintances about the rare opening they were creating. The good places are always on lock down.
In the end, there were 6 weekends where I stayed in traffic non-stop and had arrangements with nothing less than 20 different agents in the search for my elusive apartment. I’m thankful for my friends that accompanied me in the search and supported me in not making make a foolish choice by settling and also sending me links and agent contacts non stop. An Ode to you all.
And no, I would not be displaying where I found my apartment on Obasanjo’s internet. Who knows who is reading this thing now. It is a great estate and I’m tailoring every single thing to how my designer & I worked on it. I’m sure it will be beautiful (Might share on twitter), But omo, E go costtttttt.
Here are my few tips when house hunting in this Ghetto called Lagos:
Go with friends; house hunting is a battle that cannot be fought alone.
Know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who is moving out of his plush apartment in his nice estate.
The battle is not for the weak and feeble minded, don’t let agents checkmate you.
Never settle; remember you are the one that will live in the house oh. But you can compromise small.
(PS, not totally unrelated: Why is furniture so expensive, is it not the same wood they use in making pencils?)
From me and mine (apartment):
Have a great new year people.