Emmanuel Okas Wike, NIESV President
As businesses begin to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis, many of those whose operations were significantly impaired are facing rent defaults, which piled up while they were temporarily closed.
Similarly, residential tenants in the highbrow and high-density areas that suffered setback in their businesses or got laid-off by their employees are also having hard times in paying their rents. Artisans and self-employed individuals are also affected.
These have prompted property owners to make hard choices on the type of tenants to be assigned their property by adopting diligent standards. Some of the landlords have to deal with their own mortgage obligations and defaults, which similarly accrued during the pandemic.