About this dataset
Rent is the single largest line in most Nigerian household budgets and the hardest to research. Agents quote what they hope to get, listing sites skew towards the expensive end, and nobody publishes what a tenancy actually closed at. The result is that most people negotiate rent with no idea whether the figure in front of them is fair.
This dataset is built from what readers report paying. Each entry records the state, the city or area, the type of property, its condition and the rent. Everything is anonymous, no account is needed and no personal details are collected. Every submission is reviewed before it appears.
Treat the figures as a guide rather than a valuation. Rent varies enormously street by street, and a single reported figure tells you about one property rather than a market. The medians across many entries are where the useful signal lives.
How to read these figures
We publish the median rather than the average. The median is the middle value, so it is not dragged around by one unusually high or low entry in the way an average is. Where a single luxury property or one exceptional salary appears in a small sample, the average moves a long way and the median barely shifts.
Alongside every median we show how many entries it is based on and the range between the lowest and highest. Those two numbers matter as much as the median itself. A median drawn from forty entries across a city tells you something real. A median drawn from two tells you what two people paid, and should be read that way.
Dates matter too. Every entry carries the month it was reported. In categories where prices move quickly, a figure from eighteen months ago is a historical record rather than a current one, and should be weighted accordingly.
Limits worth keeping in mind
- This is self reported data, not an audited statistic. We review every entry for plausibility but cannot verify any individual figure.
- The people who submit are not a representative sample of Nigeria. They are readers of this site, which skews the picture in ways we cannot fully measure.
- Local variation within a city can be larger than variation between states, and a city level location cannot capture that.
- Where a location has only a handful of entries, treat the figure as an anecdote rather than a market rate.
- Nothing here is a valuation, an offer or professional advice. Confirm anything important directly with the relevant party.
Add your own
Every entry makes the next person better informed. The form takes under a minute, needs no account, and collects no name, email address or anything else that identifies you. Submissions are reviewed before publication, which is what keeps the data usable.
Report what you pay for rent prices, or see the other datasets.