Determinants of housing demands and residential rent costs in an emerging city in Southern Nigeria

Housing is vital to human experience. It is the basis and foci of daily activities. In Asaba, a strategically located, fast-growing metropolis, city officials are confronted by myriads of urban planning issues, one of which is provision of urban housing. This study attempted to identify the determinants of housing demands and costs of residential rents within the city (Asaba). In this study, the ex-post facto and survey designs were deployed. The data for the study comprised of the primary (questionnaire data) and secondary (historical housing data) types. For effective questionnaire administration, the study area was stratified into high, medium and low income areas. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient were deployed for data analyses. The results indicated that the key determinants of residential housing demand and costs were ease of access to public transport (69 %), nearness to security formations (80 %) and higher demand for houses in supply (75.8 %); and the Spearman's rank correlation showed that these factors were significant at P < 0.05. Other factors such as availability of electricity and access to water supply were not significant determinants of choice of housing at P > 0.05. This is due to the fact that the whole region lacks adequate electricity supply and water is self-harnessed through boreholes. ANOVA showed that there was a significant temporal variation in the cost of residential housing rents at p < 0.05 (F-69.03; sig 0.000). Consequently, this study recommends that there is need for the decentralisation of the city; which should be realised by an efficient development of the suburbs to high standards that would meet the requirements of prospective renters. Policy development and establishment of basic facilities in the suburbs, would help actualise this decentralization. Also, collaboration between government and private developers could yield more supply in the housing stuck, consequently reducing costs of housing.