Spatial analysis of the factors influencing housing quality for renters in a traditional Nigerian city

Purpose - Rental housing is an important form of accommodation; evaluating its quality will improve the quality of designs, standard living of renters, new dimension to policy guiding rental housing and enhance the values of rental houses. This study aims to examine the factors influencing rental housing quality in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach - Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select tenants for the study. Residential areas were stratified into three densities: high, medium and low. Out of the 18 residential areas identified, six, eight and four were in the high, medium and low densities, respectively. Five residential areas were selected based on high concentrations of rental housing. The selected areas are Mokuro and Iloro (high density), Ife City and Eleyele (medium density) and Aladanla (low density). Systematic sampling technique was used to select 550 buildings where an adult tenant was selected per building for questionnaire administration. Findings - The results of the principal component analysis established that four factors were generated for the high-density, nine factors for the medium-density and five factors for low-density areas as the major factors influencing rental housing quality. The variation in the number of factors generated and the percentage variance explained by the factors could be associated to the peculiarities across the densities in terms of the socioeconomic characteristics and housing characteristics of the renters. Originality/value - This study examined the factors influencing housing quality for renters in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. It provides information on the three residential densities in terms of the variation in their housing morphology. The study went further to establish the relationship among the three musketeers such as socioeconomic characteristic of renters, housing characteristics and housing quality, under three dimensions environmental, internal building and external Building. Therefore, the contribution of this study strengthens the position that a minimum standard and schedule of upgrade and maintenance should be meted out for landlords to carry out repairs at interval, so as to make the housing unit and environment habitable for tenants.