Real Estate Market Performance in Nigeria: Longitudinal Evidence from Residential and Commercial Property Sectors in Port Harcourt

The low transparency characterization of the real estate market in Africa presents an antithesis to the promising potentials of the market to global real estate investors and mutual funds. In spite of this, there appears an asymmetric synchronicity between increasing global attention towards investment potentials of the Sub-Saharan African real estate industry and an almost 50% market opacity. In addressing this anomaly, the study examines residential and commercial real estate returns from a Nigeria, using Port Harcourt city as test market. It has objectives of determining the rental value trend of residential and commercial properties in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and the longitudinal rental growth rate of residential and commercial properties in the study area. The study employed qualitative technique to collect, peruse and analyze data from valuation reports obtained from Estate Surveying and Valuation firms in the study area. The resulting data were subjected to content analysis, Analysis of Variance and Correlation. The population of the study was all residential and commercial properties which have been subjected to rental valuation by designated professionals over the periodic scope of the study. Therefore, the unit of analysis was all rental valuation reports on residential and commercial properties in the study area. Given the infinite nature of the population, Godden (2004) formula was used for sample size determination of 384. It was found that rents from residential and commercial property investments in Port Harcourt, Nigeria recorded a steady increase within 2009 to 2018, with mean rental growth rates of 10.8% and 17.8% for residential and commercial properties respectively. It was concluded that the real estate market in Port Harcourt is a high performing market, with the commercial sector offering high return on investment potentials for investors.