Life always seem good when you have less to worry about they say. Yes! less to worry about. As a young man living with his elder brother in Oshodi, the commercial centre of Lagos state, I work as an intern in a company located at Ikeja with less transport fare compared to what i would have been spending if I were to be living with our parent at Sango, Ogun state. My brother on the other hand works with an international company located at Oshodi also. Which means, he spends lesser than me to get to work everyday. I also have less to worry about because my elder brother whom I live with resides in a room self contain, with the necessary home appliances that makes life easy and fun in it's own little way. Everything was soft and easy as they say and I live my life gently with less stress. After-all, its just the 2 of us in a room self contain. It is not too small for 2 guys if you may ask me. And like i said earlier, all was absolutely going fine with us until our Titanic ship hit the iceberg.
My brother is a womanizer. If womanizing is to be a course people study in higher institutions, I bet with you he wont just graduate as just the overall best student, but also with a 5.0 CGPA. That is how bad that talent exhibit itself in him. But this time, his talent for chasing anything in skirts got him into trouble. Like the elders will always say it, whenever the guilty is being punished, the innocent with definitely take a share.
It was in a cool Saturday evening, I was relaxing inside the room, chatting on my phone when I heard the noise. It was someone knocking on the door. Oh my bad! did I just say 'knocking'? I meant to say banging. And when i mean 'banging', I mean banging like the fellow is going to break the damn door. I rushed to open the door angrily after shouting in annoyance 'wetin happen now, you wan tear the door abi?'. Revealing the culprit behind the door was so alarming. It was our landlady banging on our door like she is going to break it that very moment. Seeing her, I greeted her but without even waiting for me to finish my greeting, she shouted. Where is you brother! continuously with eyes searching the room like if he is hiding inside the walls. We were still on that when I saw her 2 sons approaching us looking like 2 KingKongs coming to save their female counterpart. I was still confused about the whole scenario when the 2 brothers grabbed me and 1 of them barked. Where is your brother! Immediately he asked, I knew very well my brother is in big trouble. They dropped me and entered the room to search for him. Not seeing him, they came out and they threatened to kill him anytime they see him. Still confused and lost, I went back into the room. On getting inside my phone rang, it was my brother calling. I picked and he was panting and asking me so many stupid questions at the same time. Oh boy how far, you still dey house? Those were the questions my brother was asking me. The rest of his questions all sounded like a dog barking to me, because I was still furious at what the landlady and her imbeciles did to me. He didn't come home that night and I was cool with it. At least I have the whole house to myself.
Rise and shine came the second day with me yawning after a very good sleep. so much for the CNN, olofofo.com.ng and the aproko nation wide association in our house to talk about.
I could hear some talking about it so, I decided to join them and asked what really happened. Thus I got to know my brother was caught with the landlady's last child. They were both caught kissing, smooching and doing other stuffs that needs not to be talked about. Supposing this girl is of a good age for that type of stuff, it wouldn't have been an issue. But the matter became an issue because she is just 16 years of age and everybody just couldn't stop talking about how shameless my brother is to have done that with her. Thou matters fade with time but, our landlady refuse to let the matter slide by. Eventually, this was what made them give us a quick notice to pack out with the assurance they will return our remaining rent fee. That was how we got ourselves into the house hunt wahala.
House hunting was hell compared to what I expected it to be like. When you want a house urgently, you tend to search without caution and, you might likely end up renting the house you won't actually like at the end of the day just because of a little impatience. On our House hunt kick off, We actually got help from friends that gave us some local agents numbers, we found some on local advert billboards and some on online real estate platforms like Nigeria property center, Larmudi and Nigeria property market.
Combining the house hunt with work wasn't easy in any way. We had to find agents phone number through many means, walk a little bit to search on our own and we also wasted money going to check for houses that were seen for us by our friends. To be sincere, now I know stress can really make a man look twice as old as his normal age.
There was this time an agent took me and a friend to check a house out. On getting to the agent small office, he said we will need to pay his inspection fee before he can take us anywhere. After so much negotiation, we gave it to him with a bad look that could have killed him supposing looks were guns. Thou he saw the look we had before giving him the money but, it was so obvious he cared less. On getting to the house, we discovered the house has no fence, no water and the building is so low and old. I got furious and requested for our money back, he tried being funny but I think he cared more about the look this time. He tried calming us down and then persuaded us to check another house he has, which is not far from that same area. We agreed and we left having a doubt this guy is not going to do better. Like it's a foreseen vision, our doubt was proved right. The house looks exactly like the twin brother of the other one we were coming from. That was how I lost it totally and demanded for my money back. He showed a little swag saying no, telling us he can never give it back. To cut it short, I thank God am not in prison now just because of 3 thousand naira and a greedy agent. It was settled by some responsible people around anyway. We went our separate ways after sharing the money into half. It wasn't easy gaining back half of what i lost, but I made sure I did.
We made so many calls, wasted a lot of money and got so many disappointment after series of so many initial ones. There were so many other inspections we went for with each inspection costing us nothing less than 2 thousand naira. Its not about the money, but about the kind of house they take us to. There was this agent I crawled his number from larmudi to help us with house at Oshodi, on getting to the house, that's after we've already paid the inspection fee, the landlord denied ever knowing the man. I should have detected the fraud before the miraculous and unexpected arrival of the landlord. All he was ranting about was how he forgot the entrance key with the landlord. If not because of God, we would have fallen into that trap easily. That is actually a very long story but thank God we were not arrested that day anyway.
We encountered so many agent issues like trust, time, and sincerity which almost made us give up. Thou we found an apartment at last but the money we spent, the stress and the energy that was wasted was quite enough to do other things in our life.
Shortly after this House hunt wahala, I got to know about Tolet.com.ng through a friend I shared my Pathetic story with. He told me about how Tolet.com.ng helped him in getting an apartment easily with no stress at all. He told me about how considerate their customer service is and how good their agents were. I decided to check them out on Tolet.com.ng. When I checked the site and saw the way they operate, it hurts me I had not known earlier. The coolest part is that all their properties have well descriptive images of the properties. That saves a lot of unnecessary inspection fee, gives you the pre-inspection service 3 thousand naira would have given you and also helps you make a quick decision. Had I known Tolet.com.ng before, my house hunt wahala would have just been fun, adventurous and educational instead of the loss of energy, time and money.
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