Why rent control won’t work without tackling housing supply and inflation

Lagos is debating the Tenancy Bill with promises to cap rent, limit agents’ fees and regulate landlords. It makes for good politics, but it is bad economics. Rents in Lagos are not spiralling because landlords woke up greedy. They are rising because demand for housing is exploding while supply has barely moved and because inflation has eroded the value of the Naira, pushing up the cost of building materials, labour and financing.

When a city of over 20 million grows by hundreds of thousands each year but delivers far fewer homes, the inevitable result is scarcity pricing. Add double-digit inflation, volatile exchange rates, and the bureaucratic nightmare of securing land titles and you have a market where developers are reluctant to build, and landlords pass on every extra cost to tenants.

The solution is not to shackle the market with rent caps that will scare off investors and shrink future supply. Lagos must instead unlock large-scale private rental development by making title registration fast, transparent, and affordable. It must also invest directly in mass housing schemes to add stock immediately and upgrade transport infrastructure to merge Lagos with nearby cities, easing urban pressure.

Finally, a time-bound eviction process concluded within 60–90 days will give landlords the legal certainty to keep units in the rental market rather than leave them empty or repurposed for other uses such as short lets.

Without these reforms, the Tenancy Bill will treat symptoms while the real disease; shortage, inflation, and poor infrastructure, keeps rents climbing.

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