{"id":2484,"date":"2022-02-03T16:53:47","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T16:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/?p=2484"},"modified":"2022-02-03T17:21:43","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T17:21:43","slug":"rent-restriction-bill-passes-second-reading-at-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/rent-restriction-bill-passes-second-reading-at-senate\/","title":{"rendered":"Rent Restriction Bill Passes Second Reading at Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A bill seeking to restrict the period of payment of rents for property in Abuja, was presented to the Senate on Tuesday, 1<sup>st<\/sup> February. Sponsored by Senator Smart Adeyemi, the bill pegs the period for which a landlord may demand rent from a tenant in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) at a maximum of three months.  This implies that payment of rent for a tenancy in the FCT for business and residential premises will be on a quarterly or monthly basis. The bill also makes it unlawful for tenant to offer to pay rent in the excess of three months. This is in contrast to the common practice where rent is calculated and paid on an annual basis. The bill further stipulates a fine of one million naira or an imprisonment term of three months for anyone found guilty of contravening this provision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bill also provides that\nwhere there is a breach of the tenancy agreement and a landlord seeks to\nrecover the premises in question, then he or she shall provide notice to the\ntenant according to applicable laws, or a month\u2019s notice for a monthly tenant and\nquarterly notice for a quarterly tenant. It further stipulates that where a\nmonthly tenant is in arrears of rent for three months or a quarterly tenant is\nin arrears of rent for six months, then the tenancy shall lapse, and the Court\ncan make an order for the landlord to take possession and collect arrears of\nrent. For a fixed term tenancy, no quit notice is required where the term has\nelapsed. However, the landlord shall give a 7-day notice of intention to\nproceed to the Court to recover possession of the premises. These provisions\nanticipate situations in which a tenant may refuse to give up possession of the\nproperty they occupy while in default of rent. However, in practice,\nenforcement may be difficult and pose losses to the landlord. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bill addresses increase\nin rent by providing that a tenant may apply to the Court for an order that an\nincrease in rent is unreasonable. The Court will either grant this order or\nrefrain from doing so on the basis of certain stipulated considerations. Also,\nthe bill&nbsp; criminalises the demolition or\nmodification of a building, threats or molestation as means to eject a tenant,\nand stipulates a maximum fine of N250,000 or a maximum imprisonment term of six\nmonths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the payment of rent on\na monthly or quarterly basis may be beneficial to some tenants in the light of\nthe economic reality in the country, some other economic realities may make\nsome tenants prefer to pay rent on a longer basis.&nbsp; Advance payment of rent can offer some form\nof security to the tenant in terms of possession and enjoyment of the property\nfor a longer period of time without interference, as well as protection from\ninflation and other market forces which may alter rent rates when paid on\nmonthly or quarterly basis. In consideration of these, it may be more\nbeneficial to allow the parties in a tenancy agreement to determine the payment\nterms. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is also unclear how the\nbill can be realistically enforced given that the property (private or\ncommercial) in question are outside of government ownership. The reality of\nhigh costs of building and expectations of property owners to reap profit may\nalso need to be matched by this bill. &nbsp;To\nconclude, the bill sounds very populist and may appeal to people on the streets\nbut the reality is that it may become necessary to examine the crisis of\nhousing not just in Abuja, but the entire country. Some suggestions in this\nregard include government funding of mortgage options for citizens, provision\nof affordable lands and secure titles, as well as massive infrastructural\ndevelopment to open up vast lands for ordinary citizens to be able to build\nhouses of their own. This would appear to be a sustainable direction to follow.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bill seeking to restrict the period of payment of rents for property in Abuja, was presented to the Senate on Tuesday, 1st February. Sponsored by Senator Smart Adeyemi, the bill pegs the period for which a landlord may demand rent from a tenant in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) at a maximum of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2495,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions\/2495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}