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| Fibre.ng |
You know how it goes. Renting an apartment in Lagos is a clusterfuck. Agents giving people haircuts (and not the type you get from a barber), Landlords asking people who earn monthly salaries to pay 2 years’ rent upfront (like you’re supposed to sell yourself into slavery to get the money), and being told inane things like, “we don’t rent out apartments to single women”. TF?
Obinna Okwodu and the rest of the team at Fibre.ng, the newest kids on the e-real estate block, appear to have cracked it. Their goal is to give Lagosians access to high quality houses as well as the option of paying for said houses on a monthly basis. “What’s the catch”, you ask? Prospective tenants get locked into one-year contracts and they have to pay 25% of the annual fee (that’s three month’s rent) to get the keys and spread the outstanding 75% over the next 11 months. And if you see things like I do, you’ll see that that’s not a catch at all. It’s redemption.
How do they get the houses in the first place? They source them according to demand. After users make requests on the website, Fibre goes looking for apartments that best match their given criteria. I reckon that system is in place so Fibre doesn’t rack up a ton of unoccupied apartments.
There was much ado on the interwebs, about Fibre.ng being steeply priced, but those complaints didn’t take things like house location and all the added charges into consideration. I did a little snooping around, and found that Fibre’s charge starts to look a lot more reasonable when you compare it with the total sum you’d have to pay if renting elsewhere. Because I’m awesome, I made you a chart to clear things up.
Fibre’s first location went live on May 6, and it’s in Lekki Phase 1. The expectation is that the first occupants will move in by June. Right now, there aren’t any other locations on their site, but we expect that they’ll epp us and make a move into the mainland. Until then? Interested parties can go on their website and subscribe to get notified.
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