As an economist, I understand that the price of anything increases with additional value; that's standard practice. However, I live in a country where standard practice is being bastardized, leaving you with questions about all the knowledge gathered in the course of your educational journey.
In my country, Nigeria, there is a tenement law that states that an apartment is subject to a rent increment if the landlord does any maintenance or major renovation of the building.
You know, it's quite unfortunate that the tenement law has never been practiced in real-life situations because on several occasions, we see landlords increase rent annually even when some of the buildings are almost dilapidated.
There was a time a lady cried out on Facebook over the outrageous increment in the cost of apartment rentals at my state capital. This increment was not because the various house owners did any maintenance, repairs, or renovation but because the government decided to tar various link roads to ease mobility.
When I read her plight, I couldn't help but feel some type of way because it honestly didn't make sense to me how repairs of roads by the government became apartment maintenance and renovation by landlords, which was criteria for rent increment.
Moving on, there was also another time in the past at the hostel I lived in while I was still in school. The rent was increased, and we were given the option to comply or move out, and it was quite a devastating experience. Devastating because I had no plans to move out, and I didn't budget for a rental increment.
What pained me most in that experience was that I and other occupants were always paying 50% of the rent for maintenance, and no maintenance was ever done. We were also not refunded, and the landlord didn't even consider all this.
As much as I wanted to contend my landlord's actions in court, none of my neighbors was willing to support me by testifying as a witness. And that weakened me, so I decided to move out because I couldn't keep up with the rip-off.
Given all that transpired, I did learn a lot from the experience, but not quite as much as my next apartment came with its own baggage. Baggage in the sense that the apartment had some electricity issues, which included a huge sum of backlog payment and an epileptic power supply due to a faulty transformer.
While I was sure to meet with the landlord and ask him specific questions on maintenance and rent increment, I didn't pay attention to the electricity bill of the compound, and it did cost me, as I saw myself offsetting the cost of the backlog bill, which I didn't use.
As I continued to live in the compound, the experiences seemed to be quite worse from where I was coming from because I was always paying for the constant repairs of the faulty transformer, and when it rained, the area was always flooded.
I almost started regretting my actions and choice of rentals, but then when I thought about how great my landlord and neighbors were, I persevered as they became more like a family to me.
A little advice to my fellow Nigerians:
When it comes to rentals, be sure to read the landlord and tenant agreement form very well before signing because there lie your woes and all the compound clauses that will seem like punishment if you eventually rent.
Security is paramount and always ask for the previous electricity bill and prepaid meter history. Also go around the neighborhood to ask about the power supply.
After discussing with the landlord on rent increment and maintenance, be sure to confirm with neighbors too.
Check for internet connectivity because the last time I visited my sister network was hell.
Most importantly, always go house hunting when it's raining season so you'll know the type of area you'd be living in.
To wrap this up, while you are renting, be sure to be saving up to own your apartment so you can finally say goodbye to rental palava.