Media Accounts of the Impact of COVID-19 on the Nigerian Real Estate Market

Abstract

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria was documented by pervasive press coverage, with daily reporting on such issues as infection rates, government expenditures on efforts to combat the disease, and non-adherence to public health measures by local celebrities. More recently, the coverage has come to include the pandemic’s effects on the economy, notably in terms of industrial performance and the implications for the livelihoods of Nigerian citizens. This paper presents an analysis of media accounts of the impact of COVID-19 on the country’s real estate industry that sheds light on the issues of concern before the pandemic, lessons about the impact of COVID-19 on the industry captured in national newspaper stories, the integration of long-standing concerns into reports on the impact of the disease, and the short-term implications for the real estate market. Specifically, within the framework of a qualitative research design, a content analysis of the coverage in three online national newspapers was conducted over the period from First February to 30^th May 2020, which was segmented into consecutive pre-COVID, pre-lockdown, and lockdown periods. The analysis was performed using Atlas ti.8 software. The results indicated that the impacts of COVID-19 on the Nigerian real estate market have included increases in void rates in the upper-income residential submarket, more defaults on loans, rents, and mortgages on commercial properties, and changes in the demand for traditional office space. It was also found that the coverage of issues related to both COVID-19 and general-interest issues remained fairly constant, except that reports about COVID-19 became more frequent during the lockdown period. The projections in the coverage regarding the immediate future of the real estate sector are varied. Practitioners expected much leaner housing sales, and there were predictions of an upward trend in the co-sharing of spaces and in mortgage defaults.