Muster, which describes itself as Africa’s first shared housing market place, has emerged as BusinessDay Business Idea of the Year 2018. Muster beat two other nominees, Go Kada and Kobo360 in a twitter poll to emerge winner with 50% of more than 2000 votes cast.
Muster tackles a unique problem in a fast growing mega city like Lagos, especially for millennials who are faced with rising rent prices, and scarcity of affordable accommodation.
Millennials struggling to find their feet in fast growing urban cities, usually do not have the income to rent accommodation in preferred areas. Besides, increasingly, because of the instability in their incomes, millennials have an increasing preference for flexible nomadic lifestyles.
As Africa’s first shared housing market place, Muster enables young people in African megacities to access affordable housing by unlocking available rooms in these cities through a peer-to-peer shared housing marketplace.
Muster is democratising the housing market by removing friction, injecting trust and increasing affordability. By renting rooms through Muster, verified people are able to pay for just the space they occupy, thereby saving on rent and bills whilst people with spare rooms are able to make extra income. The platform is built in a way that the users have total control of their experience and they are part of a Muster community.
Amongst others, Muster solves the problems of inflexible rental terms, upfront annual rent prepayment requirement as well as not fit for purpose developments.
Muster.ng was started by three young Nigerian visionaries, Ibraheem Babalola, Ugo Okoro and Akinola Adeola, with one singular aim to revolutionise the housing market so that people (especially young people) will have undisrupted access to good, clean and affordable housing.
According to one of its founders Ibrahim Babalola “Muster.ng is Nigeria’s first rent-share platform. Muster connects people looking for other people to rent properties with, people that already have properties and want to sublet part of it, agents with properties that can be shared by two or more people, and co-working locations. With Muster.ng, we are hoping to create an ecosystem where sharing is enabled and encouraged by disrupting the traditional property lettings space”.
Muster is a glimmer hope for cities that are being saturated with rising population. In crowded African cities it is not unusual to find rent prices to be more than salaries made by young people.
As a result of this, young people find it very difficult to get affordable housing. This is one of the problems that Muster.ng aims to check. It offers a digital platform that houses a peer-peer shared housing marketplace that unlocks available rooms in crowded cities. Muster basically breaks down high exorbitant rent prices.
With Muster.ng you find verified people to share rent with so that clean, exclusive neighbourhood wouldn’t be years down the line. Muster adds a new flare to the traditional housing market that is valued at $137b, it makes this market more accessible to young people.
It guarantees control, wealth creation, affordability, flexibility, bill management and fraud prevention within the housing market. It also opens the market to endless possibilities that are beyond its financial value. Muster offers social interaction possibilities, bringing together people of diverse language, religion and tribal identity. These people are brought together under the common bane of the need to have to access affordable housing.
“We have been bootstrapping but are currently in talks with a number of investors who believe in the potentials of Muster.ng and are willing to partner with us as we provide Nigerians with a new way to rent”.
One of the founders Ugo Okoro was recently interviewed on Fidelity Bank’s SME forum. On the show Okoro shared expert insights on the ways he and his team have managed to a monetize a social initiative such as Muster.ng;
“Our fundamental focus at Muster.ng is to create value and cater to the need of people looking to rent properties in an affordable way. Muster.ng does not charge users to create accounts, have a sharer’s contact card or list properties. However, in a bid to maintain the integrity and security of users on the platform, users can only communicate through the messaging feature on Muster.ng. We overwhelmingly advise users to keep the conversations on the platform and not share phone numbers or email address till they are “Mustered.” Muster.ng charges for initiating new conversations. There’s a 11% service fee that’s charged on the rent of every room on Muster. Seven percent of that fee is paid by the renter and 4% is paid by the host (room owner)”
How is Muster.ng different other online house hunting platforms you ask? Ibrahim Babalola puts it rightly:
“Muster.ng is tailored to a niche market. The reason why the properties on those other platforms rarely get rented is that majority of them are unaffordable. Muster.ng helps agents give property seekers the flexibility to split rent, thereby making the property more affordable and closing the listing faster than on any of the other traditional property lettings platforms”
“A unique challenge for Muster.ng is the trust deficit in the Nation. The most frequently asked question that our 24-hour customer support team gets is, “I want to share but how secured will I be in the property with someone I meet on Muster.ng”. So whilst people are open to sharing, they want to be assured that they will have a good living experience.
“To address this, we get KYC documents from every sharer that creates an account on muster.ng and use that for background checks. We will also keep in contact with sharers to find out how they are getting on. In the unlikely event that a sharer wants to move out, all the person needs to do is put the property back up on muster.ng. Nonetheless, we also have tips on Muster.ng for what to look out for in choosing the perfect sharer”.
Since launch in July 2017, the company has facilitated over 600 rented rooms and people with rooms on Muster have earned over N100,000,000 in rental income.
Muster prioritised going live in Nigeria in H2:2017 over other African countries due to a larger addressable market (Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country) and has continued to make impressive strides, recording a week-on-week surge across measurable metrics.
In December, the Cross River State Ministry of Culture & Tourism announced Muster as the Official Accommodation Partner for the 2018 Calabar Carnival, enabling people in Cross River to earn money on the spare rooms in their houses.
Muster was founded on a belief in the possibility of a world without homelessness where every young person has access to affordable housing and “The plan is to do for African megacities, what AirBnB did for hospitality.”
The company is backed by local and US investors, with support from Amazon Web Services amongst others and has been featured on local and international media.
By our Reporter
