The founders of KoboRent, a mobile service said they have created an easy-to-use platform that hopes to reduce costs for both buyers and sellers in the real estate market.
[blockquote right=”pull-right” cite=”KoboRent”]Leveraging on the continent’s successful adoption and persistent usage of mobile phones, the KoboRent infrastructure seeks out a market entry solution on mobile’s most native feature: SMS. [/blockquote]
KoboRent, a tech-based rental listings distribution service was devised to to meet the challenging problems of the real estate market in Nigeria “with an equally pervasive solution”, its founders have announced.
According to them, “of all the countries on the African continent, Nigeria is the worst hit by outrageous property-related costs.”
The trend becomes more obvious if one looks particularly at the country’s burgeoning rental market, in which property vendors charge extremely high estate agency fees-sometimes as high as 10% of the rent for low-end properties, KoboRent said.
“This puts Nigeria 70-100% ahead of countries like Ghana and Kenya, where agents’ commission-fees are as low as 1.25%. In Uganda, the fee is between 5% and 10% and is paid by the buyer”, the company said amid plans to expand the service across West Africa.
Mobile technology solutions for a pervasive problem
“Nigerian renters are expected to give away up to 10% of the rent cost to cover “dubious” fees for the go-between services of property agents; paid in addition to full rental charges. This permissible duplicity of charges on rental fees makes that middle ground a blistering hot marketplace”, the company identified.
Leveraging on the continent’s successful adoption and persistent usage of mobile phones, the KoboRent infrastructure seeks out a market entry solution on mobile’s most native feature: SMS.
Under the plan, on the platform; an agent can complete a rental transaction from start to finish on the strength of a phone-feature and a buyer can use any SMS enabled device to search, find, and engage the services of the property agent in charge of the property of choice.
However, the SMS functionality is foremost a market entry strategy and a selling point to reach out to otherwise inaccessible markets.
KoboRent boasts a robust web interface that holds various options to further reduce both real and cognitive home rental costs in Nigeria.
According to the platform founders: “What we have developed is a 360 degree user experience that replicates on a tech platform most of the real time actions that prospective renters, leasers or buyers have to go through to get a property option that meets their desired criteria.”
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