MARKET RESEARCH · FOR DEVELOPERS · PERI-URBAN DISTRICT GREATER ACCRA
The rent they wanted needed a tenant the district does not have.
A developer was setting rents for a new multi-unit residential scheme in a peri-urban district on the edge of Greater Accra. The target rent had been drawn from asking prices in the city’s central rental corridors, thirty minutes and one income bracket away.
6–7%
4–5k
30%
THE SITUATION
A rent set by comparison, not by catchment
The scheme was priced against listings in the central corridors, on the reasoning that the finish quality was equivalent. On specification it was. On catchment it was not.
Nobody had asked the prior question: how many people who live and work within reach of this site can pay that rent every month, for years, without moving out at the first shock.
What WE Did
Sized the tenant pool before testing the price
We worked from the district’s own income structure rather than from comparable listings, then tested the target rent against what that structure can actually carry.
A
Income structure
B
Affordability ceiling
C
Absorption evidence
What we did
Sized the tenant pool before testing the price
We worked from the district’s own income structure rather than from comparable listings, then tested the target rent against what that structure can actually carry.
A
Income Structure
B
Affordability ceiling
C
Absorption evidence
What we found
A pool of four to five thousand, for the whole district
Only 6–7% of the district’s employed workers could carry the target rent inside the affordability ceiling. In absolute terms that is roughly 4,000–5,000 people district-wide, competing for the attention of every other landlord in the same band.
The listing evidence showed no price elasticity above that band. Units asking more did not achieve more; they sat longer and were discounted later.
Above the band, a higher rent did not find a wealthier tenant. It found no tenant.
WHY IT MATTERS
Void months cost more than the discount
A unit priced 15% above what its catchment can pay does not earn 15% more. It earns nothing for the months it stands empty, and the arithmetic of that gap rarely recovers.
Pricing to the income structure of the real catchment is not a discount. It is the difference between a let scheme and a full one.
THE SERVICE BEHIND THIS
Developer market research
Rent and price bands set against the income structure of the actual catchment, so units let instead of sitting empty at the asking price