By Nafisah Adedoja
If you’ve ever searched home listings in Nigeria, especially on Instagram– you know the drill. Attractive photos, remarkable subtitles, horrendous rates. For a moment, you begin to wonder:” Am I damaged or is this residence trying to fraud me?” Spoiler alert: it’s both.
Honestly, the real estate market below feels like a social experiment. Your houses are doing one of the most, the representatives are doing extra, and the rates? Pure creativity. Let’s simplify.
Nigerian duplexes typically attempt to do excessive, but wind up doing inadequate. You’ll find residences with extra-large home windows, a phony terrace no person can stand on, and a roofing system that resembles it was obtained from 3 various structures.
Some programmers are clearly chasing a “modern aesthetic,” but it winds up looking like a mashup of five YouTube tutorials.
Let’s be truthful, the pricing in this market is unserious.
A 3 -bed room bungalow in the outskirts of Lagos is noted for 180 million. And of what? You won’t see constant light. You’ll probably need a borehole. And yet, they’ll call it “budget-friendly deluxe.”
Also in the “excellent” locations, some homes just do not warrant the price. Certain, it’s on a popular road or near to some celeb’s home, however when you go into, it’s the same tired finishing, recycled tiles, and hollow doors. You’re not paying for quality, you’re spending for postal code prestige.
And afterwards there’s the now-legendary deserted residence in Abuja going with 2 2 billion. Yes, billion with a B. The house resembles it relinquished living thirty years ago. They assert the rate is due to the fact that it’s on one of the most expensive roads in the city, however you’ll still need to renovate it from the ground up. Possibly the ghosts come cost-free with the residential property– talk about included value.
By the time you refurbish it right into something livable, you’ve essentially built an additional house.
Instagram listings are the worst perpetrators. Everything looks perfect … golden lights, flawlessly presented furniture, filter working overtime. You’ll start assuming, Ah ah, this na wise financial investment.
Then you go for assessment and the “large cooking area” is actually a tiny box with one outlet and a misaligned sink. The house you saw online? Clearly a remote relative of the one in front of you.
Nigerian real estate representatives deserve their own honors. Their subtitles are wild:
“A mix of beauty and refinement awaits you in this state-of-the-art work of art.”
Meanwhile, the “masterpiece” is a mini flat with a fractured ceiling and one ceiling follower hanging on for dear life.
They’ll inform you the house is” 5 mins far from the government’s house,” however fail to mention it’s just real if you’re traveling by helicopter.
Reality is, a lot of these residences aren’t offering what they’re meant to provide. They’re called “luxury” due to the fact that somebody added marble floor tiles and mounted a microwave on the wall. But beyond that? Standard finish, bad carpentry, and the exact same closet that begins trembling when you open it also fast.
The best part is when they claim “fitted cooking area” and all you see is one microwave, two cabinets, and a tap that leakages on sight. If that’s what counts as equipped, after that I have actually been staying in deluxe my whole life.
Right now, I’m not in the marketplace to purchase a home. By the time I’m ready, the marketplace could have reset itself and began making good sense.
Till after that, I’ll keep scrolling through listings, saving screenshots, and asking myself deep questions like, “Why is this residence 200 million and still doesn’t have stable water?”
Eventually, we go step. But also for now, na to dey observe.