Three groups, always named
The Nigeria Property Centre Affordability Gap puts what three groups of people budget beside what's asked for the same home: one property type (flat or house) and one size (1 to 5 bedrooms) in one state or locality. Each group is always named, because their budgets differ, sometimes by three times:
- People searching our site: the budgets people typed when they searched.
- People who asked agents to find them a home: a self-selected group whose budgets run lower, often because searching didn't find them a home in their budget.
- People who set an alert: the most they told us they'd pay in an alert.
People searching our site
We count searches that stated a budget over the thirty days to the quarter's last day (17–30 Sept 2026 for Q3 2026). The search log is clean from 17 Sept 2026, so a window never reaches back before then: Q3 2026's covers fourteen days. The median comes from budgets grouped in price bands about 1.5 times apart, so it is precise to about ±20%.
Until 26 Sept 2026, a search that chose a payment period, such as "per month", was recorded as a plain budget on that period's scale. Where more than 5% of an area's budget searches for a home chose a period, its searchers' figure counts only from 26 Sept 2026: 45 figures in Q3 2026, each marked on the report.
Searches and alerts ask for a minimum: a search for 2 bedrooms counts in the 2-bed figure and means "2 or more"; the 5-bed figure is 5 or more. Requests and asking prices are for exactly that many bedrooms. A column needs at least 50 budget-stated searches.
People who asked agents to find them a home
We count approved requests posted in the twelve full months to the quarter's end (Oct 2025–Sept 2026 for Q3 2026), by individuals, guests included. One request counts per account (or, for guests, per email) per home, the most recent. A request for a locality counts there and in its state. Rent budgets are a year. A column needs at least 30 requests.
People who set an alert
We count alerts that were live on the quarter's last day (30 Sept 2026): confirmed, not paused, and not imported from our old alerts. An alert counts for its exact type with its minimum bedrooms, one per owner per home, the most recent, using its maximum price. A column needs at least 30 alerts.
The asking side
Each figure is measured against the median asking price in the latest Rent, House Price and Short-let Index release for the quarter's last month, for the same area, type and size. Rent is the standard rent a year; Buy is the total price; Short-let is per night. Only figures the index publishes count, so an area with too few listings has no row. Q3 2026 is measured against September 2026, a month the index reconstructed from listings already on the site.
The gap
Gap = (budget median − asking median) ÷ asking median, as a whole percentage rounded half away from zero. −71% means the group's median budget is 71% below the asking median. A row shows when its asking figure is published and at least one group reaches its minimum.
What we leave out
Requests and alerts with a budget under 1/20 or over 20 times the asking median are left out as typing errors. Every rule, with what it left out in Q3 2026:
| Left out | Rent | Buy | Short-let |
|---|---|---|---|
| Requests posted from our "What can I afford?" tool | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Requests posted by agents or developers | 2,018 | 1,366 | 45 |
| Requests for land (the House Price Index has no land series) | 27 | 145 | 1 |
| Self Contain requests in 1-bed rent cells (they are for a room) | 1,599 | — | — |
| Requests for 1-bed houses to rent (they are for rooms) | 371 | — | — |
| Requests with a budget under 1/20 or over 20 times the asking median | 394 | 46 | 8 |
| Repeat requests from the same account or email for the same home | 314 | 14 | 9 |
| Searches with a budget but no property type | 15,399 | 5,903 | 663 |
| Searches with a budget but no bedroom count | 12,646 | 4,960 | 414 |
| Searches that chose a payment period (their budget is on that period's scale) | 3,761 | 0 | 104 |
Withdrawn and rejected requests are never counted. Self Contain homes are listed as 0 bedrooms, so the index starts at 1 bedroom and has no Self Contain cells.
Why this differs from Demand vs Supply
Demand vs Supply compares all homes in an area with what's listed today; the Affordability Gap compares one home type and size with the Rent, House Price and Short-let Index. So Demand vs Supply's "budget gap" mixes every home type and size, and only counts searches; here each group is compared with the index for one home, so the numbers differ.
Releases and corrections
A release comes out each quarter at 09:00 on the working day after the quarter's last Rent Index month publishes, and is never recalculated. If that index month is corrected, a corrected release comes out the same day: every budget, count and exclusion stays as first published, and only the asking side, the gaps and which rows show change. The corrected release says when and why, and the version it replaced stays at its own link.
How to cite
Name the group with the figure, and cite the release: Nigeria Property Centre Affordability Gap, Q3 2026 release, Nigeria Property Centre, https://nigeriapropertycentre.com/market-trends/affordability-gap#release-2026-q3. The figures are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.