AN ASSESSMENT OF CONVERSION OF RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY TO COMMERCIAL USE AND ITS IMPACTS ON RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY VALUES

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CHAPTER ONE

  1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Shelter is a basic necessity in life. An individual can satisfy this need by either occupying his own (owner’s occupier) property or renting another person’s property. In our traditional society, the need for shelter is mainly met through the first alternative that is owner occupation.With the emergency of urban centers’, the situation has changed. Many people are no longer about to own property because of the difficulty in the acquisition of land and the high cost of building construction. Therefore, they are left with the alternative of renting other people’s properties in order to satisfy their need for shelter. Consequently two classes of urban resident have emerged, the landlord and the tenan tunder this arrangement the tenant pays to the landlord a certain amount of money in consideration for his use of the landlord’s house.This amount is popularly known as rent. During the civil war the Nigeria that is 1966 to 1970 many landed properties in the urban areas of the former Eastern Region of Nigeria, including Enugu, were destroyed.Consequently,there was as harp decline in the supply of land edproperties after the war. Furthermore, the post – civil war period witnessed.