No income, no tenant. Vacancies hit 11.39% in quarter 3 of 2020, noticeably up from 9.13% in the “hard-lockdown quarter” Q2 and 7.47% in Q1. To quote the Bankserve Africa Take-home Index, “the number of take-home monthly payments in June 2020 decreased by -20.7% on a year ago… It is possible that a fifth of employees in the private sector did not receive a salary in June 2020.” Never before has a vacancy been more appealing than a squatting tenant. “Lockdown” Regulations have dramatically suspended landlords’ rights to execute on their eviction orders.
