Owerri Residents Groan Over Exorbitant House Rents

For residents, finding an affordable house in Owerri may be likened to a Herculean task, only achievable with a huge financial war chest and the ability not to get offended.

Residents complain that it is increasingly difficult to get a new apartment, not because people are relocating from the villages or other States to Owerri.

According to them, they have to endure exorbitant house rents and greedy house agents, always ready to trick house seekers out of hard-earned resources.

Findings showed that prospective tenants pay for forms to a house agent. And when the house is secured through several referrals from other agents, the agreement fee is increased so that every agent can receive a substantial share.

When renting a property in Owerri, you must budget for additional mandatory upfront fees in addition to the annual base rent. Real estate transactions usually include an agency fee, typically ten (10) to fifteen (15) per cent of the annual rent, but it can change when there are many agents.

Onyinyechi Andrew, who was recently transferred to Owerri by her employers, said she was inundated with excessive charges from some landlords and estate agents.

For a room ensuite with a kitchen and bathroom/toilet in Nekede, largely populated by students of the Federal Polytechnic Nekede, the price fluctuated between ₦180,000 and ₦360,000 depending on how new the building is, street location, proximity to the main road, good road, and availability of electricity.

The same room in New Owerri, considered a prime area in Ikenegbu, New Owerri, and Port Harcourt Road, New Owerri, ranged from ₦400,000 to ₦600,000, excluding additional mandatory upfront fees on top of the annual base rent, which will include agency fees, legal/agreement fees, and caution/damage fees.

2-bedroom flat is between ₦1.2million and ₦2 million annually, while 3-bedrooms is from ₦1.5million to ₦3million. Some duplexes are already above ₦ 5 million.
These days, it is common to see two families sharing a 3-bedroom apartment so they can pool their rent and live in town. A family takes the sitting room and another room, while the other takes two rooms. They share the kitchen, or one uses the passage. Such houses have two bathrooms/toilets, with one each.

Onyinyechi said she had to pay transportation costs for herself and the agent to inspect any property, and regretted that most times they were inches short of a pigsty.

She said, “This agent took me somewhere in World Bank, and I asked myself if I looked like a loafer to him. You could see it was a generator house that had been quickly converted into a room, so dark and stuffy. I ran out for my dear life. I wanted a house, not somewhere to die”, Onyinyechi said.

According to her, agents saw potential tenants as avenues for extortion, saying, “On our way back, the agent asked me if I had ₦3,000 and when I asked for what, he said he wouldn’t mind using it to buy chicken lap to chew. I just told him no, I may be looking for a house but I’m definitely not a conduit for his silly cravings”, Onyinyechi said.

An Owerri-based civil servant, Theophilus Chimaobi, accused some property agents of encouraging landlords to raise rents to earn higher commissions.

Chimaobi said the financial pressure eventually forced him to relocate from the city to a less expensive area on the outskirts of Owerri in Umuguma, adding that the road to his house is nothing short of hell.

He said, “The difference between where we live in Umuguma and Ikenegbu is well over ₦500,000; where do I get that from, and then still feed my family and pay school fees? But the access road has been under repair for over six months. Every morning I wake up, I take a deep sigh of pain, wondering how to traverse the trauma that day. If only the road is completed, then half of my worries will be over because the house is modern, but the road and transportation costs are choking us”, Chimaobi lamented.

Another resident, Ebere Chima, expressed concern that some two-bedroom flats in parts of the city were now being offered for between one million and one-point-eight million Naira, saying the development was making decent accommodation increasingly difficult for average income earners.

However, some landlords have defended the rising rents, attributing the increases to the high cost of building materials, property maintenance, and occasional levies for road and transformer repairs.

Meanwhile, the Imo State government has said plans are underway to build affordable housing estates in Owerri to ease housing concerns in the state.

Imo State Commissioner for Urban Development and Housing, Hon. Bede Eke, told reporters in January 2025 that the Housing Ministry will be extremely busy because Governor Uzodimma wants to build housing estates.

Eke had said, “We are going to build massive housing estates to foster affordable homes for Imo people, especially the middle-class income earners. I can assure you that we are already working on it and in the coming weeks, the governor will make announcements about it.”

Every day, people are relocating to Owerri to stay closer to their parents, start businesses, begin new families, study, and more. Still, the issue remains that houses are not enough to accommodate the teeming populace. One of the main challenges is that Owerri residents lament being tired of extortion.