The first time someone told me I was “wasting money on rent,” I was sitting in a rented apartment in Ajah, eating jollof rice I could actually afford because I hadn’t sunk my entire net worth into a building. The person giving me the advice? A landlord who had been trying to sell a property in Lekki for eight months with zero offers. The irony was thicker than Lagos traffic on a Friday evening.
The rent-versus-buy debate in Nigeria is one of those conversations that generates more heat than light. Everyone has an opinion, most of them inherited from parents who built houses in the 1980s when a plot of land in Ikeja cost less than a Toyota Corolla costs today. But the Nigeria of 2026 is not the Nigeria of 1985.
Inflation is different. Interest rates are different. Urbanisation has changed our desires of what a good home is. The entire structure of how wealth is built and preserved has also shifted. So let us actually do the math, strip away the emotions, and figure out when renting wins, when buying wins, and when you should just mind your business and ignore your uncle’s WhatsApp forwards about “landed properties near Dangote refinery.”
The Nigerian Dream of Owning a House
Interesting topic because while the capitalist in me wants to make bank like Lagos and Abuja landlords, the socialist in me balks at the high price. As such, the realist in me definitely prefers the lower-priced rent and ample space of Arepo, or Magboro and Mowe.
But of course, there’s always our parents’ voice in our head that says “Why are you paying rent? You’re making your landlord rich” “Buy your own land, start building your house” “This money you just paid as rent can build the foundation”
It’s like the Nigerian dream, if one ever existed. In fact, many of our parents started with one or two rooms in an uncompleted building before building out the rest. But times have changed. You certainly can’t do that in most parts of Lagos, that is even if you can afford to buy a quarter plot and build, or buy a house that can see into your neighbour’s bedroom.
To put it in perspective, the average price of a 3-bedroom flat in Lekki Phase 1 now sits between N80 million and N200 million depending on the estate. In Abuja’s Maitama or Asokoro, you are looking at N150 million to N400 million for a decent detached house. Meanwhile, the median income in Lagos is roughly N150,000 to N250,000 a month. The gap between what people earn and what houses cost is not a gap; it is the Grand Canyon.
According to the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa, Nigeria’s housing deficit stands at approximately 17 to 28 million units, depending on who you ask. The National Bureau of Statistics puts home ownership at about 25% in urban areas. Compare that to South Africa at around 65%, Kenya at 26%, and even Ghana at about 47%. We are not just behind; we are running the race in the wrong direction.
The Math Behind Renting
To take another look at our parents’ advice, for most people in the building phase of wealth, buying a house is making a financial mistake, except, of course, it is for investment purposes. The main argument is always: “Rent is a waste. At the end of the year, you have nothing to show for it.” Let’s test that.
Imagine you want to live in an apartment in Lekki/Ajah worth N200 million. The rent for that house, a Phase 2 apartment, likely costs 4 million to 5 million a year. That is a rental yield of 2% to 2.5% per year.
If you buy the house and live in it, you’re locking down N200 million of capital to save N5 million in rent, but that means that N200 million is working for you at a 5% return. In an economy with almost 30% inflation (yeah, it’s going down), that is a CAPITAL DISASTER.
If you took the same N200 million and put it in a safe instrument, even a simple Treasury Bill or a Eurobond fund doing 10%, you’ll make N20 million a year. You could pay your N5 million rent and still have N15 million leftover.
In this scenario, renting is actually profitable. Also, if you’re a business owner, putting in N200 million into inventory or expansion should yield 20-30%. Turning your capital into concrete means you are killing your business growth to satisfy your ego.
Let me put it even more starkly. Nigerian rental yields are among the lowest in Africa:
- Lagos: 2-4% gross rental yield (one of the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa)
- Abuja: 3-5% gross rental yield
- Nairobi, Kenya: 5-7% gross rental yield
- Accra, Ghana: 7-10% gross rental yield
- Johannesburg, South Africa: 7-9% gross rental yield
This means that as a landlord in Lagos, the rent you collect barely covers 2-4% of the property value per year. As a tenant, you are getting an incredible deal relative to the asset value you are occupying. The math favours renting in Lagos more than almost any other major African city.
The Math Behind Buying
Now that I’ve badmouthed buying a house enough, that does not mean you should never buy. Buying is not always a bad deal. It depends entirely on your situation, your goals, and your capital structure. For example, a house can be a financial investment. Say you get a mortgage at 9.75%, and you buy a house in an area giving you at least 10%, even if you’ll still be adding some money. If you rent out the whole house and are able to use the rent to offset the mortgage cost for a period of 10 years, you essentially get a 100 million property for 10 million plus the returns for 10 years.
Only a few asset classes can turn 10 million to 100 million in 10 years, possibly more because the house could appreciate as much as 150 million plus you’d still be collecting rent. Of course, maintenance costs apply too.
The challenge, however, is that Nigerian mortgage rates are among the harshest in the world and they are not very accessible. I have written about the mortgage issue elsewhere so I won’t go too deeply into it. The average mortgage interest rate in Nigeria ranges from 18% to 30%.
At 25% interest over 20 years, a N50 million mortgage would cost you roughly N250 million in total repayments. You are paying for the house five times over. The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) offers the National Housing Fund at a more palatable 6%, but the maximum loan is N15 million, which in 2025 barely buys you a self-contain in Ikorodu.
The Hidden Costs Nobody Tells You
Of course, owning a house also comes with fees. For example, buying comes with regulatory hurdles, and agency and legal fees, sometimes 10% or more to buy.
Another issue is maintenance. A house is a living thing that constantly tries to die. Roof leaks, pipes burst, POP falls, and more. Also, the cost of depreciation in Lagos is also chilling when you consider the huge sum spent to buy these properties and the fact that the developer has most likely tried to cut costs by using substandard materials and the artisans have most likely fixed something in a way that keeps you calling.
Let me break down the hidden costs that nobody puts in the brochure:
- Legal and agency fees: 5-10% of property value (lawyer fees, agent commission, survey fees)
- Governor’s Consent / C of O processing: N500,000 to N5 million depending on state and property value. In Lagos, getting a Certificate of Occupancy can take 6 months to 3 years and involves multiple trips to Alausa that will test your faith in humanity.
- Stamp duty: 1.5% of property value (recently increased under the Finance Act)
- Annual land use charge: Lagos introduced this and it keeps climbing. Some estates in Ikoyi pay N2 million to N5 million annually.
- Service charges: Monthly service charges in some apartments and estates will set you a figure that rivals rents in other areas. Service charges are just so-called fees for reduced security and cleaning whereas you’ll pay inflation on power charges and battle flood and traffic still.
- Maintenance and repairs: Budget 1-3% of property value annually. That N200 million house needs N2 million to N6 million a year just to not fall apart.
Real estate is the most illiquid asset class. You cannot sell a bathroom to pay for a medical emergency, nor can you sell your kitchen to pay school fees. If you dump all your cash into a house, you can easily be asset rich, cash poor.
And here is the one nobody talks about: the title risk. Nigeria’s land administration is a minefield. Omo onile (land grabbers) are an actual profession in Lagos. Excision disputes, government acquisition notices, family land wahala, and cases where the same plot has been sold to three different buyers are depressingly common. The Lagos State Real Estate Transactions Department (LASRETRAD) was supposed to clean this up. Progress has been… slow.
So, to Rent or to Buy?
Buying seems to be a hurdle but rent is not cheap either and you are getting to a point where you want to have your forever home. So when do you rent and when do you buy?
When Renting Actually Wins
If you’re still building, especially in a volatile country like Nigeria, cash flow is king.
Renting is the smarter move when:
- You are in your 20s or 30s and still building your career or business. Mobility matters.
- You are a business owner. Putting N200 million into inventory or expansion should yield 20-30%. Turning your capital into concrete is killing your business growth to satisfy your ego.
- You live in a city with low rental yields (2-4%). You are getting more value as a tenant than the landlord is getting as an owner.
- You do not have stable income to handle mortgage payments, maintenance, and unexpected costs.
- You are unsure about staying in one location long-term. NYSC just posted you to Sokoto, and you are not sure if you will end up in Lagos, Abuja, or Port Harcourt.
- The opportunity cost of your capital is higher elsewhere. If you can earn 20-25% on Treasury Bills or 30-40% in your business, locking capital in a house earning 2-4% is irrational.
When Buying Makes Sense
Also, if you’re optimizing for stability, for starting a family, and not returns, then by all means, buying makes more sense. You’re paying for a luxury, and not an investment since you want your own space, freedom, and no landlady/landlord nonsense again. In this case, buying is not a financial strategy, it is just about having a home. Asides this, there are still instances where buying still makes financial sense.
Buying makes financial sense when:
- You have excess liquidity. Too much money. You can park the money in a house. You’re not after survival money again after all.
- You are playing the 20-year game. Land banking and capital appreciation to protect your wealth from devaluation over decades.
- You are taking a high-risk investment approach. Apartment price for a two-bedroom at a friend’s building rose from N45 million in late 2022 to over 100 million by early 2025. If that’s your game, then that’s understandable too.
- You are buying to rent out and the rental income covers or exceeds your mortgage payment. This is a genuine wealth-building strategy.
- You are an older professional with a stable career and family, and you want the psychological comfort of knowing nobody can evict you.
- You have access to a subsidized mortgage (FMBN, employer-backed, diaspora schemes) that makes the total cost competitive with renting.
The Nigerian Context: Why This Is Harder Than It Should Be
The reason this debate is so heated in Nigeria is because the system is broken in ways that make both options painful.
For renters: Landlords demand 1-2 years’ rent upfront. In most developed countries, you pay monthly. In Lagos, you drop N3 million to N8 million in one shot. That is a barrier that turns renting into a capital-intensive activity, which defeats the entire purpose of renting being the low-capital option.
For buyers: The mortgage system barely exists. Less than 3% of Nigerians have mortgages, compared to 15% in South Africa and 30-40% in the US and UK. There are fewer than 50,000 active mortgages in a country of 220 million people. The Primary Mortgage Institutions are underfunded, the National Housing Fund is capped too low, and the private banks charge interest rates that would make a loan shark blush.
For everyone: The land titling system is a disaster. Getting a Certificate of Occupancy in Lagos involves a journey through bureaucratic purgatory that can take years and cost millions in unofficial “facilitation fees”, governor’s consent fee, deed registration, survey plans, omo onile settlements. It is a system designed to extract money at every stage.
A Practical Decision Framework
Here is a simple framework to guide your decision:
Step 1: Calculate your rent-to-buy ratio. Take the price of the home you want and divide by the annual rent. If the ratio is above 20 (as it is in most of Lagos), renting is mathematically superior.
Step 2: Calculate your opportunity cost. What return can you get if you invest that capital elsewhere? If it is above the rental yield (2-4% in Lagos), you are better off renting and investing.
Step 3: Assess your liquidity needs. If buying will drain more than 50% of your liquid assets, you are taking too much risk.
Step 4: Factor in your life stage. Building a career? Rent. Settled with family? Consider buying. Entrepreneur needing capital? Rent, always.
Step 5: Evaluate the title and legal risk. If you cannot verify the title chain, do not buy. Full stop.
The Bottom Line
The long and short is to stop letting societal pressure and childhood delusions dictate your balance sheet. If you’re trying to grow wealth, rent the lifestyle and invest the capital. If you’re trying to preserve the wealth, buy the asset. Just know the difference before you sign the deed.
Your uncle who keeps telling you to buy land in Epe does not have access to your bank statement, your business projections, or your risk profile. You do. Make the decision with your spreadsheet, not your ego.
And if you are a landlord reading this and feeling offended, relax. I’m not saying real estate is a bad investment. I’m saying it is a terrible primary residence decision for most young Nigerians in the wealth-building phase. The numbers don’t lie, even if our parents did (with love).
May 4, 2026
9 minute
Isreal Oyarinde
To Rent or To Buy a House: The Nigerian Housing Dilemma
Table of Contents
The first time someone told me I was “wasting money on rent,” I was sitting in a rented apartment in Ajah, eating jollof rice I could actually afford because I hadn’t sunk my entire net worth into a building. The person giving me the advice? A landlord who had been trying to sell a property in Lekki for eight months with zero offers. The irony was thicker than Lagos traffic on a Friday evening.
The rent-versus-buy debate in Nigeria is one of those conversations that generates more heat than light. Everyone has an opinion, most of them inherited from parents who built houses in the 1980s when a plot of land in Ikeja cost less than a Toyota Corolla costs today. But the Nigeria of 2026 is not the Nigeria of 1985.
Inflation is different. Interest rates are different. Urbanisation has changed our desires of what a good home is. The entire structure of how wealth is built and preserved has also shifted. So let us actually do the math, strip away the emotions, and figure out when renting wins, when buying wins, and when you should just mind your business and ignore your uncle’s WhatsApp forwards about “landed properties near Dangote refinery.”
The Nigerian Dream of Owning a House
Interesting topic because while the capitalist in me wants to make bank like Lagos and Abuja landlords, the socialist in me balks at the high price. As such, the realist in me definitely prefers the lower-priced rent and ample space of Arepo, or Magboro and Mowe.
But of course, there’s always our parents’ voice in our head that says “Why are you paying rent? You’re making your landlord rich” “Buy your own land, start building your house” “This money you just paid as rent can build the foundation”
It’s like the Nigerian dream, if one ever existed. In fact, many of our parents started with one or two rooms in an uncompleted building before building out the rest. But times have changed. You certainly can’t do that in most parts of Lagos, that is even if you can afford to buy a quarter plot and build, or buy a house that can see into your neighbour’s bedroom.
To put it in perspective, the average price of a 3-bedroom flat in Lekki Phase 1 now sits between N80 million and N200 million depending on the estate. In Abuja’s Maitama or Asokoro, you are looking at N150 million to N400 million for a decent detached house. Meanwhile, the median income in Lagos is roughly N150,000 to N250,000 a month. The gap between what people earn and what houses cost is not a gap; it is the Grand Canyon.
According to the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa, Nigeria’s housing deficit stands at approximately 17 to 28 million units, depending on who you ask. The National Bureau of Statistics puts home ownership at about 25% in urban areas. Compare that to South Africa at around 65%, Kenya at 26%, and even Ghana at about 47%. We are not just behind; we are running the race in the wrong direction.
The Math Behind Renting
To take another look at our parents’ advice, for most people in the building phase of wealth, buying a house is making a financial mistake, except, of course, it is for investment purposes. The main argument is always: “Rent is a waste. At the end of the year, you have nothing to show for it.” Let’s test that.
Imagine you want to live in an apartment in Lekki/Ajah worth N200 million. The rent for that house, a Phase 2 apartment, likely costs 4 million to 5 million a year. That is a rental yield of 2% to 2.5% per year.
If you buy the house and live in it, you’re locking down N200 million of capital to save N5 million in rent, but that means that N200 million is working for you at a 5% return. In an economy with almost 30% inflation (yeah, it’s going down), that is a CAPITAL DISASTER.
If you took the same N200 million and put it in a safe instrument, even a simple Treasury Bill or a Eurobond fund doing 10%, you’ll make N20 million a year. You could pay your N5 million rent and still have N15 million leftover.
In this scenario, renting is actually profitable. Also, if you’re a business owner, putting in N200 million into inventory or expansion should yield 20-30%. Turning your capital into concrete means you are killing your business growth to satisfy your ego.
Let me put it even more starkly. Nigerian rental yields are among the lowest in Africa:
This means that as a landlord in Lagos, the rent you collect barely covers 2-4% of the property value per year. As a tenant, you are getting an incredible deal relative to the asset value you are occupying. The math favours renting in Lagos more than almost any other major African city.
The Math Behind Buying
Now that I’ve badmouthed buying a house enough, that does not mean you should never buy. Buying is not always a bad deal. It depends entirely on your situation, your goals, and your capital structure. For example, a house can be a financial investment. Say you get a mortgage at 9.75%, and you buy a house in an area giving you at least 10%, even if you’ll still be adding some money. If you rent out the whole house and are able to use the rent to offset the mortgage cost for a period of 10 years, you essentially get a 100 million property for 10 million plus the returns for 10 years.
Only a few asset classes can turn 10 million to 100 million in 10 years, possibly more because the house could appreciate as much as 150 million plus you’d still be collecting rent. Of course, maintenance costs apply too.
The challenge, however, is that Nigerian mortgage rates are among the harshest in the world and they are not very accessible. I have written about the mortgage issue elsewhere so I won’t go too deeply into it. The average mortgage interest rate in Nigeria ranges from 18% to 30%.
At 25% interest over 20 years, a N50 million mortgage would cost you roughly N250 million in total repayments. You are paying for the house five times over. The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) offers the National Housing Fund at a more palatable 6%, but the maximum loan is N15 million, which in 2025 barely buys you a self-contain in Ikorodu.
The Hidden Costs Nobody Tells You
Of course, owning a house also comes with fees. For example, buying comes with regulatory hurdles, and agency and legal fees, sometimes 10% or more to buy.
Another issue is maintenance. A house is a living thing that constantly tries to die. Roof leaks, pipes burst, POP falls, and more. Also, the cost of depreciation in Lagos is also chilling when you consider the huge sum spent to buy these properties and the fact that the developer has most likely tried to cut costs by using substandard materials and the artisans have most likely fixed something in a way that keeps you calling.
Let me break down the hidden costs that nobody puts in the brochure:
Real estate is the most illiquid asset class. You cannot sell a bathroom to pay for a medical emergency, nor can you sell your kitchen to pay school fees. If you dump all your cash into a house, you can easily be asset rich, cash poor.
And here is the one nobody talks about: the title risk. Nigeria’s land administration is a minefield. Omo onile (land grabbers) are an actual profession in Lagos. Excision disputes, government acquisition notices, family land wahala, and cases where the same plot has been sold to three different buyers are depressingly common. The Lagos State Real Estate Transactions Department (LASRETRAD) was supposed to clean this up. Progress has been… slow.
So, to Rent or to Buy?
Buying seems to be a hurdle but rent is not cheap either and you are getting to a point where you want to have your forever home. So when do you rent and when do you buy?
When Renting Actually Wins
If you’re still building, especially in a volatile country like Nigeria, cash flow is king.
Renting is the smarter move when:
When Buying Makes Sense
Also, if you’re optimizing for stability, for starting a family, and not returns, then by all means, buying makes more sense. You’re paying for a luxury, and not an investment since you want your own space, freedom, and no landlady/landlord nonsense again. In this case, buying is not a financial strategy, it is just about having a home. Asides this, there are still instances where buying still makes financial sense.
Buying makes financial sense when:
The Nigerian Context: Why This Is Harder Than It Should Be
The reason this debate is so heated in Nigeria is because the system is broken in ways that make both options painful.
For renters: Landlords demand 1-2 years’ rent upfront. In most developed countries, you pay monthly. In Lagos, you drop N3 million to N8 million in one shot. That is a barrier that turns renting into a capital-intensive activity, which defeats the entire purpose of renting being the low-capital option.
For buyers: The mortgage system barely exists. Less than 3% of Nigerians have mortgages, compared to 15% in South Africa and 30-40% in the US and UK. There are fewer than 50,000 active mortgages in a country of 220 million people. The Primary Mortgage Institutions are underfunded, the National Housing Fund is capped too low, and the private banks charge interest rates that would make a loan shark blush.
For everyone: The land titling system is a disaster. Getting a Certificate of Occupancy in Lagos involves a journey through bureaucratic purgatory that can take years and cost millions in unofficial “facilitation fees”, governor’s consent fee, deed registration, survey plans, omo onile settlements. It is a system designed to extract money at every stage.
A Practical Decision Framework
Here is a simple framework to guide your decision:
Step 1: Calculate your rent-to-buy ratio. Take the price of the home you want and divide by the annual rent. If the ratio is above 20 (as it is in most of Lagos), renting is mathematically superior.
Step 2: Calculate your opportunity cost. What return can you get if you invest that capital elsewhere? If it is above the rental yield (2-4% in Lagos), you are better off renting and investing.
Step 3: Assess your liquidity needs. If buying will drain more than 50% of your liquid assets, you are taking too much risk.
Step 4: Factor in your life stage. Building a career? Rent. Settled with family? Consider buying. Entrepreneur needing capital? Rent, always.
Step 5: Evaluate the title and legal risk. If you cannot verify the title chain, do not buy. Full stop.
The Bottom Line
The long and short is to stop letting societal pressure and childhood delusions dictate your balance sheet. If you’re trying to grow wealth, rent the lifestyle and invest the capital. If you’re trying to preserve the wealth, buy the asset. Just know the difference before you sign the deed.
Your uncle who keeps telling you to buy land in Epe does not have access to your bank statement, your business projections, or your risk profile. You do. Make the decision with your spreadsheet, not your ego.
And if you are a landlord reading this and feeling offended, relax. I’m not saying real estate is a bad investment. I’m saying it is a terrible primary residence decision for most young Nigerians in the wealth-building phase. The numbers don’t lie, even if our parents did (with love).
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To Rent or To Buy a House: The Nigerian Housing Dilemma
The first time someone told me I was “wasting money on rent,” I was sitting in a rented apartment in Ajah, eating jollof rice I could actually afford because I hadn’t sunk my entire net worth into a building. The person giving me the advice? A landlord who had been trying to sell a property in Lekki for eight months with zero offers. The irony was thicker than Lagos traffic on a Friday evening. The rent-versus-buy debate in Nigeria is one of those conversations that generates more heat than light. Everyone has an opinion, most of them inherited from parents who built houses in the 1980s when a plot of land in Ikeja cost less than a Toyota Corolla costs today. But the Nigeria of 2026 is not the Nigeria of 1985. Inflation is different. Interest rates are different. Urbanisation has changed our desires of what a good home is. The entire structure of how wealth is built and preserved has also shifted. So let us actually do the math, strip away the emotions, and figure out when renting wins, when buying wins, and when you should just mind your business and ignore your uncle’s WhatsApp forwards about “landed properties near Dangote refinery.” The Nigerian Dream of Owning a House Interesting topic because while the capitalist in me wants to make bank like Lagos and Abuja landlords, the socialist in me balks at the high price. As such, the realist in me definitely prefers the lower-priced rent and ample space of Arepo, or Magboro and Mowe. But of course, there’s always our parents’ voice in our head that says “Why are you paying rent? You’re making your landlord rich” “Buy your own land, start building your house” “This money you just paid as rent can build the foundation” It’s like the Nigerian dream, if one ever existed. In fact, many of our parents started with one or two rooms in an uncompleted building before building out the rest. But times have changed. You certainly can’t do that in most parts of Lagos, that is even if you can afford to buy a quarter plot and build, or buy a house that can see into your neighbour’s bedroom. To put it in perspective, the average price of a 3-bedroom flat in Lekki Phase 1 now sits between N80 million and N200 million depending on the estate. In Abuja’s Maitama or Asokoro, you are looking at N150 million to N400 million for a decent detached house. Meanwhile, the median income in Lagos is roughly N150,000 to N250,000 a month. The gap between what people earn and what houses cost is not a gap; it is the Grand Canyon. According to the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa, Nigeria’s housing deficit stands at approximately 17 to 28 million units, depending on who you ask. The National Bureau of Statistics puts home ownership at about 25% in urban areas. Compare that to South Africa at around 65%, Kenya at 26%, and even Ghana at about 47%. We are not just behind; we are running the race in the wrong direction. The Math Behind Renting To take another look at our parents’ advice, for most people in the building phase of wealth, buying a house is making a financial mistake, except, of course, it is for investment purposes. The main argument is always: “Rent is a waste. At the end of the year, you have nothing to show for it.” Let’s test that. Imagine you want to live in an apartment in Lekki/Ajah worth N200 million. The rent for that house, a Phase 2 apartment, likely costs 4 million to 5 million a year. That is a rental yield of 2% to 2.5% per year. If you buy the house and live in it, you’re locking down N200 million of capital to save N5 million in rent, but that means that N200 million is working for you at a 5% return. In an economy with almost 30% inflation (yeah, it’s going down), that is a CAPITAL DISASTER. If you took the same N200 million and put it in a safe instrument, even a simple Treasury Bill or a Eurobond fund doing 10%, you’ll make N20 million a year. You could pay your N5 million rent and still have N15 million leftover. In this scenario, renting is actually profitable. Also, if you’re a business owner, putting in N200 million into inventory or expansion should yield 20-30%. Turning your capital into concrete means you are killing your business growth to satisfy your ego. Let me put it even more starkly. Nigerian rental yields are among the lowest in Africa: This means that as a landlord in Lagos, the rent you collect barely covers 2-4% of the property value per year. As a tenant, you are getting an incredible deal relative to the asset value you are occupying. The math favours renting in Lagos more than almost any other major African city. The Math Behind Buying Now that I’ve badmouthed buying a house enough, that does not mean you should never buy. Buying is not always a bad deal. It depends entirely on your situation, your goals, and your capital structure. For example, a house can be a financial investment. Say you get a mortgage at 9.75%, and you buy a house in an area giving you at least 10%, even if you’ll still be adding some money. If you rent out the whole house and are able to use the rent to offset the mortgage cost for a period of 10 years, you essentially get a 100 million property for 10 million plus the returns for 10 years. Only a few asset classes can turn 10 million to 100 million in 10 years, possibly more because the house could appreciate as much as 150 million plus you’d still be collecting rent. Of course, maintenance costs apply too. The challenge, however, is that Nigerian mortgage rates are among the harshest in the world and they are
May 4, 2026
Isreal Oyarinde
Solopreneur to CEO: A Lazy Founder’s Practical Guide to Building and Leading Teams
People close to me hold two ironic views of me. One is that I am lazy and I delegate too much. The other is that I am somehow hardworking. Both are true. And that contradiction is the entire philosophy of this essay. You Are the Problem (And That’s OK) I am probably a bonafide member of the hustle culture club —you know, the one that sleeps by 3am-4am, up by 8am at most, running on caffeine and persistent burnout. But I also believe it is madness to do the same thing by yourself over and over again. Here is the uncomfortable truth: if you are still the smartest person in the room, and if your business grinds to a halt when you leave, you are not a CEO. You are a glorified freelancer with overheads. To transition from solopreneur to CEO, you must embrace what I call the “Lazy Founder Methodology” which is really about finding the smartest, most leveraged way to set things up so they run without you. Leverage is the keyword here. And the first step? Admitting that you are the problem. If you have created a monopoly where you are the only provider of solutions, you probably have a founder-dependency disease. The good news? It is curable. The bad news? The cure requires you to let go. The SPOF Diagnosis: Are You a Single Point of Failure? I have spoken extensively about “Single Point of Failure” (SPOF) in engineering and business. In most businesses —including, at various points, my own — the founder is the SPOF. You are the Chief Marketing Officer, the Head of Sales, the Customer Support Lead, and the only person who can sign off on anything. You are the bottleneck disguised as a leader. Here is a quick self-diagnosis. Answer honestly: If you answered “no” to more than two of those, congratulations —you are a SPOF. Your business is not a business; it is a job that you created for yourself with extra steps. And the irony is that this job has no leave days, no pension, and the HR department (also you) is terrible. The Eisenhower Matrix is your friend here. Categorize every task you do into four quadrants: The fear of delegation is real. If a task requires your specific skill like strategy or closing high-value clients, you can keep it. But everything else? Start looking for what you can let go of. It is not about burning yourself out less. It is about building something that does not require your fire to stay warm. The next natural step after this is finding qualified and trustworthy people who can take up the things you are letting go of. So, to the next big question, how do you hire? Hiring in Nigeria: A Nightmare With Solutions Let me be honest: hiring in Nigeria is a nightmare. I have had bad hires that did the worst damage to projects precisely because the role was fully remote and unsupervised. In the early days of running Contentika, I found it really hard to find and retain talents. The good ones get entrepreneurial fast or get poached by international companies paying in dollars. The mediocre ones come with inflated CVs, fake experience, and LinkedIn profiles that read like fiction. And let me add, we do not have a robust system to verify credentials the way some countries do. There is no centralized background check database. Reference checks are often a formality where the “referee” is the candidate’s cousin using a different phone number. In short, I would not sugar coat what it takes by simply saying “hire the best people”. The truth is hiring the best people is very hard and keeping them is even harder. But it is not impossible. Here is what I have learned about finding and keeping them: Where to Find Talent How to Filter Do not hire cheaply. When I interview somebody, I run rigorous assessments regardless of their CV. I have seen first-class graduates who cannot write a coherent email and HND holders who can architect entire systems. The paper means less than the proof. Smart people do not come cheap. When you get them “cheap,” you get the enshittification of your product and service. It is a false economy. Budget for talent the way you budget for infrastructure —it is not optional. Documentification: The Ultimate Legacy This is the first thing I did when I started managing people instead of just managing myself: I wrote everything down. Everything. “Documentification” is my term for the obsessive documentation of every process, decision, and standard in your business. It is the single most important thing you can do to transition from solo operator to CEO. Here is why: if the knowledge of how your business operates lives only in your head, it dies when you step away. Every. Single. Time. When starting (or restructuring) a business, script everything: The tools for this are abundant and mostly affordable: This protects against the enshittification of your business. Everything about the decline of your service quality starts with undocumented processes. When the person who “knows how” leaves — and they will leave— the knowledge leaves with them. Documentation is your insurance policy against brain drain. Note that it is not just enough to document, draw data from what you have documented and apply them to improve your processes. No-Trust Architecture: Trust the System, Not the Person “No-Trust” is not about being paranoid or treating your employees like criminals. It is about building systems where consistency does not depend on any single person’s goodwill, competence, or presence. If the quality of your product or service is dependent on your physical presence or specific salespeople, that is a red flag. Build a quality culture instead. SOPs ensure consistency. Consistency builds trust. And trust is cumulative. Every time a customer has the same positive experience regardless of who serves them, your brand equity goes up. Theft is a silent killer, invisible when starting a business. Inventory