ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM OF PROPERTY MANAGEMENT AND MAINTENANCE

ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM OF PROPERTY MANAGEMENT AND MAINTENANCE
 
ABSTRACT
Shelter has been universally accepted as the second most important essential human need after food. Housing in all its ramifications is more than mere shelter since it embraces all the social services and utilities that go to make a community or neighbourhood liveable environment. Efficient housing design is becoming increasingly imperative in Nigerian urban centres; this is because housing is an essential and fundamental component of the overall land use activities in both rural and urban centres. Besides, it has a tremendous positive influence on the health, safety and welfare (economic and social) of residents of any community. A country where the per capital income is at its lowest point, a low-income environment explains the low take home pay, which does not permit savings. It follows that where the poor manages to feed and may be, cloth himself and members of his family, he may never be able to pay his rents or own a house of his own. The study is an attempt to uncover the various constraints and challenges of property maintenance and management in federal housing estate in Lagos using federal low cost housing estate jakande ikorodu as a case study. Management of low cost housing estate, not only covers rent collection, repairs and maintenance but also other aspects of good management. The importance of management of low cost housing estate has become so technical that the knowledge and services of competent property managers are required to perform the task. The research adopted case study and serve research methods. The study was based on federal low cost housing estate. A total of 90 respondents who are occupying the property and 70 estate surveyors and valuers, were randomly selected. Only 120 out of the 160 participants responded, representing 80% of the distributed questionnaire. Being a survey design that tested the correctness of the observed frequency of responses, percentage distribution was initially used to describe the pattern of responses of the participants while non parametric binomial test statistics was used to test the statistical significance of the observation. Results of the study revealed that a significant number of the participants do not know what property management practices are and therefore it is not sought for or employed. Lack of fair rent to cover maintenance cost and non periodic rent to arrest the effect of galloping inflation in the economy poses a lot of problem for the property manager. This was seen by the fact that most participants supported the management federal low cost housing estate. The research concluded that property management is as important as property development as the lack of it eventually diminishes the national housing stock, apart from constituting a waste of scare economic resources.