I got my apartment via OLX. Met the agent and landlady and paid same day.

nedu2000:
I'm looking for a 2 bedroom apartment around satellite town in lagos with parking space,pls how do I go about it? Obtaining a shop with all these agents really stressed me out

Send your request to socialmedia@Letout.com.ng we will get you hooked up

deybholar:
Hahaha..those agents are a bunch of clowns. After stating Clearly my specifications for the kind of house I wanted, they started taking me to very very terrible houses! The annoying it is that the Landlord would just put an unbelievable price tag on the house.
If you want to charge me 600k per annum, at least let the house be habitable. Not the one that the past tenants have destroyed the W.C, messed up the kitchen, broken tiles everywhere!

I got frustrated and started checking OLX thinking at least I would see pictures of the house before wasting my time....WRONG! The jokers there advertised a beautiful house and took me to a shanty!

I have been in your shoes several times. Letout.com.ng is coming soon, we will make property search easy for realtors and tenants.

Compound and parking space is like fried rice in those areas o, very scarce. If you see it will be very small, they've built houses on everything

PRCONNECT:
If you dont want to pay another N2k to another agent, stick to the agent that you have paid the N2k to. He will keep calling other agents to find what your need for you. If eventually you need to contact another agent, let him know you are from the 1st agent. With that, you are not to pay another N2k.

All the best in your search. I guess most of the houses they took you to dont even have Compound and Parking space

lucky you

donigspain:
I got my apartment via OLX. Met the agent and landlady and paid same day.

Mehn all the posters here help me a lot. thanks all.
I am looking for a 2 bedroom apartment in peace estate at Baruwa ipaja or at Shagary estate Abesan...
anyone with good connection can add me on whatsapp with 07013268404. Nelson.....

PRCONNECT:
The Search


You have the imagination of that your dream home and then the search begins. You have 2 ways to go through the search process.

1) Using an Agent

With this process, you meet the agent and in most cases, they ask you to pay for Inspection fee ranging from N3000 to N5000. After paying for the inspection fee, the agent makes few calls to some of his fellow agents and then your journey begins.

You get to the agents location who said he had the property and to your amazement, he says there is another agent who will have to take you to the said property. On meeting the 2nd agent he tells you there is yet another agent who is the direct agent to the brief. You, Agent 1, Agent 2 heads to where Agent 3 is and if you lucky, he is actually the direct agent to the property. If not, you will continue to pick agents until you get to as many as you can carry before you eventually get to the property.

When you eventually enter the said property, you look at all of them and you wonder why on heaven they will bring you to such a place. If you are lucky to like the place, then your negotiation starts .If you don’t like the place, then you hear one of the long pool of agents you have saying he has another property somewhere that you will love. In anxiety the main agent and your new subordinate agent follows you to this new apartment. Dot forget that you are likely to pick another agent along the way who will lead you to this new apartment.

If after your rigorous search, you finally see something you can settle for, then the part two of your search just started. Let’s assume the landlord listed the apartment for N400,000 per year and request for a year and half rent, after you have seen the house and agreed to the N400,000 rent, then the agent tells you that the landlord wants 2 years rent (Agency is 10% of the amount you pay for the rent, so if you do 1and half year, Agency is N60,000. If you pay the landlord 3 years rent, then Agency in this case is N80,000). Agents actually want you to pay for 2 years rent or 1 and a half year rent. Even if the landlord agrees for a year rent, the agent will not give you that information until they see that you are keen on the 1 year rent and you very ready to pay. Some landlords and areas are very prone to minimum of 2 years rent and example of such area is Yaba and surulere environs.

How Agency, Legal and Damages is calculated.

Let’s assume the 2bedroom apartment costs N400,000. If you pay for 2years rent, then your total package is calculated thus:

2 years Rent-N800,000
Agency:N80,000( 10%)- Always very difficult to negotiate this. It’s this N80, 000 that all the agents will share
Legal -N80,000 (10%)- You can negotiate to pay 5% for this one.
Damages- They call it refundable damages. But please, forget about collecting that back except you are a lawyer and likes wahala. Let’s assume the damages here is N50,000. Your total package will then be N1,010,000.

In my next article, I will take you through how to use online property Portals like Nairaland, Tolet.com.ng, Privateproperty, Property24 etc and how to get good deals, detect fraudulent agents.

Share your property search experience in Lagos.

I'm sorry, Nigeria is a jungle as far as property business is concerned. For the life of me, I can't comprehend how an estate agent and a lawyer could be asking for a 10 and 5% fees respectively. It's absolute madness but not unusual in Nigeria since it's the lunatics that are running the asylum. I remember a friend of mine here in the U.K negotiating to buy a property with a price tag of 40 Million Naira. The estate Agent asked for 10% agency fee while the lawyer wants 5% for his services. I can't understand the reason for the unreasonable and astronomical charges demanded by the agent and the lawyer considering the fact that the seller who is the principal investor is not likely to make as much profit as the agent and the lawyer. I can't understand how a client is expected to shell out a fee of 6 Million Naira on a property of 40 Million Naira and they will also charge the vendor (property owner) another fee for helping to sell the property. The other ridiculous thing is the webb of agents involved in a single deal as there could be up to six agents involved. To me, these so called agents are nothing but property touts that should be adequately regulated by the relevant authorities.

slightlyMad:
add this

1. dont rent a house where landlords lives, they will become your second parents and will command you to put off your gen set after 10pm
even when the next compound neighbor runs 24 hours next to same landlord's bedroom.

2. check outstanding nepa bills, i inherited over 200,000 naira nepa debt in my current appartment.

3. check that the WCs, Kitchen pipes, water supply unit does work, get water, flush, then walk round the house to confirm that it actually exits to the soakaway
dont be surprised if your neighbors come knocking telling you not to use you kitchen sink if you dont do this little painless experiment

4. anything not fixed before you make payment has a 98% chance of it not fixed, even if it is the main door to your apartment.

5. talk to your intending neighbors to confirm anything issue they are dealing with
a smart way to ask is " is there anything you feel i should demand from the landlord to fix since i am in a position where i can get him to do something"

6. thank me after

lmao @ "inherited"

Movingcoil:
I paid for this land yesterday.
Do not piss here...
Order by npf

This is the exact reason why I and DH wanna move out of our present house, the landlady is a pain in d asz, our visitors aint allowed 2pack dia cars in d compound, and if u are visiting us, if we no come pik u from outside, the kind interview wey she go do u ehn, job interview dey learn. Hmmmmm! God help us


[quote au4270236]add this

1. dont rent a house where landlords lives, they will become your second parents and will command you to put off your gen set after 10pm
even when the next compound neighbor runs 24 hours next to same landlord's bedroom.

2. check outstanding nepa bills, i inherited over 200,000 naira nepa debt in my current appartment.

3. check that the WCs, Kitchen pipes, water supply unit does work, get water, flush, then walk round the house to confirm that it actually exits to the soakaway
dont be surprised if your neighbors come knocking telling you not to use you kitchen sink if you dont do this little painless experiment

4. anything not fixed before you make payment has a 98% chance of it not fixed, even if it is the main door to your apartment.

5. talk to your intending neighbors to confirm anything issue they are dealing with
a smart way to ask is " is there anything you feel i should demand from the landlord to fix since i am in a position where i can get him to do something"

6. thank me after


[/quote]

Peace estate dey get light?

nelcliff:
Mehn all the posters here help me a lot. thanks all.
I am looking for a 2 bedroom apartment in peace estate at Baruwa ipaja or at Shagary estate Abesan...
anyone with good connection can add me on whatsapp with 07013268404. Nelson.....

nedu2000:
I'm looking for a 2 bedroom apartment around satellite town in lagos with parking space, pls how do I go about it? Obtaining a shop with all these agents really stressed me out

go through the websites stated by the op and look for apartments around Satelite to know the price range. Look for an agent, i pray your agent will be good as mine.

Well, we went in search of an apartment is Surulere, o boy!!! e no easy at all!!!!!!!!!! if you the see the room space some landlords rent out as bedrooms...hmmm... i was surprised and angry. what about the amount? ridiculous amount for one pot hole that after you put your bed, there's no space to walk around in the room ....

I thank God that i found an agent living very close to my house. He was the only agent that took us to about 7 houses on a Saturday and the last apartment we saw that day, immediately i fell in love with it. It was exactly what i wanted. The landlady collected a years rent. The compound has a big parking space, its very clean, 2 pumping machines & 2 tanks( one for the landlord and tenants) and has 2 tenants.

I vowed never to live in the same house where the landlord resides but this landlady no get whala unlike the former place where the landlord has key to pumping machine and will only pump water whenever he likes.....

serendipityF:
Peace estate dey get light?

I really don't know. that is why I asked for anyone with good connection so I can ask those questions....

thanks.

Ok, we are in the same shoes thats Y I asked, shagari estate/Abesan is a very very lovely place to stay, light and security is 90% perfect but houses are a bit on the high side against our budget, so so 2bed of 350/400 na im full dere, however baruwa(peace and diamond estate) has very lovely new cheap houses too like 200-250k but some1 told me dia light isnt good at all, dunno how true it is tho bt mehn! Light is everything oo

nelcliff:


I really don't know. that is why I asked for anyone with good connection so I can ask those questions....

thanks.

Their is no sector which corruption will not surface. Pls intending and aspiring landlords, some agent re fraudulers pls chase them of if u no u dnt wnt to business them, advertise ur house ur self pple will come and rent,

As an Estate Surveyor and Valuer who is vast with the property market, i would say that the Op was spot on with his descriptions of the Lagos road side agent. If you patronise a registered Estate Surveyor and Valuer, you won't have to pay the 3000 - 5000 inspection fee and that will save you a lot of money.
Damages or caution fee is actually say between 10% to 30% of the total rent. It is dependent on the propensity of that property to get damaged. For example, you would be required to pay up to 30% of the rent for caution fee for a building with plenty glass finishing.
Please guys, patronise registered Estate Surveyor and Valuers.

kowema:
Lagos Landlord Be like
Rent is 200k
and you go happy finish.

Then here comes the bad news :..Total Package is 700 Thansannd!!!!!!..
And u begin to wonder, who taught these Landlords their kind of maths.

Reminds me of my search for an apartment, had a budget of 350k total package & 250k per annum after much frustrating waka waka with agent found an apartment within my budget only to call the landlord & was told 250k annually total package 550k, na so I sigh, landlord say make him give breakdown but b4 he could finish I don end call. I just go back house go sleep, Lagos tire man

imoci:
i Just got an apartment last week.

The journey actually began the weekend before the Easter break.
But then there was a printer who did my wedding Iv some years back and he is also an agent. i have told him early this year that i will be in
need of a two bed with price range 200-250k.I also told him my area of choice,he made it clear to me that the least i could get in that area is 300k.

when i was actually ready i contacted another agent,i paid 1k for form and that same day he called an agent who said he has what i needed and
when we got there the agent called another agent and that one asked us to come for inspection,when i got to the house i felt in love with it and promised to pay the third day which was on a Monday since that day was on a Saturday.
on Sunday morning i took my wife to the said apartment and she loved it.

The house was a storey building with four flats,each flat with a pre-paid meter and another meter for water pumping machine,a very serene environment. But unfortunately i loss the apartment to another client who paid that same Sunday.this i discovered when i told my agent that i was on my way to make payment for the said apartment and he replied that it has been taken by another person.but he assured me that i should come there was another one.
serioulsy that day we waka no be small.i didd find any thing close to what i wanted.

please what area is 2Bed for 300K? i am in need of apartment like seriously. either 1bed flat or a mini flat. thanks

Waiting for the 2nd part of this.... prconnect

kowema:
Lagos Landlord Be like
Rent is 200k
and you go happy finish.

Then here comes the bad news :..Total Package is 700 Thansannd!!!!!!..
And u begin to wonder, who taught these Landlords their kind of maths.

Basically, Landlords are not the ones that inflate. Its the Agents. Landlords who do this are just hungry.If you rent House from a landlord directly, he should be concerned with the rent and then maybe 5% for legal( Agreement) fees.

The 2nd part will be out this week.

funkystanl:
Waiting for the 2nd part of this.... prconnect

Emmayur:
As an Estate Surveyor and Valuer who is vast with the property market, i would say that the Op was spot on with his descriptions of the Lagos road side agent. If you patronise a registered Estate Surveyor and Valuer, you won't have to pay the 3000 - 5000 inspection fee and that will save you a lot of money.
Damages or caution fee is actually say between 10% to 30% of the total rent. It is dependent on the propensity of that property to get damaged. For example, you would be required to pay up to 30% of the rent for caution fee for a building with plenty glass finishing.
Please guys, patronise registered Estate Surveyor and Valuers.

is there any you know or can recommend for surulere?

OH!
how about a room self contain at mende maryland which an agent started negotiation with me at 170k and i beat it down to 130k per year, we agreed agent n com to be 20k/20k, total package 170k, by the time i ran around and completed my fund, i went back to cross inspect the house on my own before making payment, there i met the direct agent in charge of the house, to my amazement, he said the house is for 220k per year n commission is 30k, total package being 250k, gbagaun!
now it could be that the agent i first met is the one jonzing me, cos why would you start negotiation from 170k if the house is really going for 220k
or... the direct agent is the one that added his own additional yearly income so they would also get commission every year ...
oh boy, house wey i don snap send to my friends calculate say na #50 bike to and from my office wey for make sense die for me, na so them turn am to nightmare, every other, i av a place here, i av a place there na jokes!, those their places no dey part of am at all, one agent promised me and he was like ohhhhh, dont worry, u will like the place, by the time he took me there, the road that even led to the place self has already put my spirit off, when we reach there, i look d man shake head like....u look me finish com think say me go like this place? JOKER!

what i do about the agency fee of theirs, i dont pay it o, i will only agree to give em #500 for transport and pay their form fee once i see a house i like and want to take, most of them will be reasonable and succumb, both-ways its a win win....

i am still searching seriously and Anthony/maryland rent fees are killing, 250-400k for a room self contain, choi! in this current situation of the country, God help us all.

deybholar:
Hahaha..those agents are a bunch of clowns. After stating Clearly my specifications for the kind of house I wanted, they started taking me to very very terrible houses! The annoying it is that the Landlord would just put an unbelievable price tag on the house.
If you want to charge me 600k per annum, at least let the house be habitable. Not the one that the past tenants have destroyed the W.C, messed up the kitchen, broken tiles everywhere!

I got frustrated and started checking OLX thinking at least I would see pictures of the house before wasting my time....WRONG! The jokers there advertised a beautiful house and took me to a shanty!

Got tired of OLX and Lamudi at one point because the pictures they would put did not reflect the current state of the house.

trumovement:
Reminds me of my search for an apartment, had a budget of 350k total package & 250k per annum after much frustrating waka waka with agent found an apartment within my budget only to call the landlord & was told 250k annually total package 550k, na so I sigh, landlord say make him give breakdown but b4 he could finish I don end call. I just go back house go sleep, Lagos tire man

my experience today. I just weak

I have been house hunting in Lagos for over two weeks now. My experience has been horrible. I have spent so much on agent fees and bikes. Aguda, Surulere has the most inflated price for dumps. If you see what they call 2/3 bedroom flats. The finer newer ones come with its special price tags for those that can afford it. Total package is always above one million. I am so tired, stressed and pissed off. The number of broken down water closets I have seen this past few days eh! I ought to use hypo to wash out my eyes. House hunting in Lagos is hell.

masties2:
I have been house hunting in Lagos for over two weeks now. My experience has been horrible. I have spent so much on agent fees and bikes. Aguda, Surulere has the most inflated price for dumps. If you see what they call 2/3 bedroom flats. The finer newer ones come with its special price tags for those that can afford it. Total package is always above one million. I am so tired, stressed and pissed off. The number of broken down water closets I have seen this past few days eh! I ought to use hypo to wash out my eyes. House hunting in Lagos is hell.

House hunting in Lagos is 6 unit course. House Hunting in Surulere and Yaba is 10 unit course. Both locations are close to the island and mainland and based on this fact, vacant houses are always hot cakes.

Good houses in this areas will deff come with a price tag and landlords dont pay attention to taking care of their apartments because SOMEONE WILL COLLECT.

Funny enough, lot of persons have been very lucky to get good houses in that same area with moderate prices.

All the best in your search.

A storey building with four flats and shop in front for sale. Location : off AIT ROAD alagbado lagos state. Asking price 40 million Pm me for the phone number if interested
Thanks.

masties2:
I have been house hunting in Lagos for over two weeks now. My experience has been horrible. I have spent so much on agent fees and bikes. Aguda, Surulere has the most inflated price for dumps. If you see what they call 2/3 bedroom flats. The finer newer ones come with its special price tags for those that can afford it. Total package is always above one million. I am so tired, stressed and pissed off. The number of broken down water closets I have seen this past few days eh! I ought to use hypo to wash out my eyes. House hunting in Lagos is hell.

I could have written this same lines as this is exactly my experience in the same axis. The only thing that'd be different is my own search is going on 3 months now. Tired is an understatement with respect to how I feel now. I am weary.

I finally settled for an apartment at Shasha Akonwonjo. Quite good. Renovated flat off the road and spacious compound. Although, there is still work to be done I the interior to make it more comfortable but for 350k/550k, it is a good bargain. Best of all, the area has good power supply. Despite taking the advice here, I discovered too late that I inherited crazy PHCN bills. All the same I am pleased considering my experience. Thanks Op

I finally settled for an apartment at Shasha Akonwonjo. Quite good. Renovated flat off the road and spacious compound. Although, there is still work to be done I the interior to make it more comfortable but for 350k/550k, it is a good bargain. Best of all, the area has good power supply. Despite taking the advice here, I discovered too late that I inherited crazy PHCN bills. All the same I am pleased considering my experience. Thanks Op for the thread.