This agreement
These terms are the agreement between you and Abodiea for the use of the Abodiea tenant app, the Abodiea Landlord app and this website. By creating an account you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not use Abodiea.
What Abodiea is, and is not
Abodiea is a record keeping and payment tool for residential tenancies. It lets a landlord manage properties and tenancies, and it lets a tenant pay rent forward in instalments toward a rent that is due annually.
Abodiea is not:
- a bank, and it does not take deposits. Money paid through Abodiea is rent paid toward a specific tenancy, not money set aside for you, and it does not earn interest.
- a lender. Nothing is advanced to you and there is nothing to repay.
- a party to your tenancy agreement. The tenancy is between the landlord and the tenant. Abodiea records it and moves money against it; it does not become your landlord or your tenant.
- an estate agent, and it does not find tenants or properties.
Your account
- You must be at least eighteen years old.
- The details you give us must be true, and you must keep them up to date.
- A tenant must complete identity verification before a tenancy can be attached to their account.
- Your account is yours. Keep your device lock and your one time codes to yourself, and tell us at once if you think someone else has got into your account.
- A landlord may add other people, such as a caretaker, to his account. He is responsible for what they do on it, and for removing them when they should no longer have access.
Tenancies and invitations
A tenancy begins on Abodiea when a landlord creates it and sends an invitation, and the tenant claims it with the code he is sent. A landlord must have the right to let the property and must describe the rent and the term accurately. A tenant must only claim a tenancy he has actually been offered.
The terms of the letting itself, including the rent, the term, the notice and what happens at the end of it, are between the landlord and the tenant under their own tenancy agreement and under Nigerian tenancy law. Abodiea does not set them and does not enforce them.
Paying rent forward
- A tenant chooses a rhythm, daily, weekly or monthly, and Abodiea derives an amount from the rent and the time remaining in the term. He may change the rhythm, and he may pay more at any time.
- Each payment is rent paid forward on that tenancy. It is held against that tenancy and applied to the rent when it falls due.
- Because it is rent and not a deposit, it is not withdrawable on demand. What happens to rent already paid forward if a tenancy ends early is governed by the tenancy agreement between the landlord and the tenant, and by Nigerian tenancy law. Abodiea will provide both parties with the full payment record.
- Abodiea does not guarantee that a tenant will complete his rent, and it is not liable to a landlord if a tenant does not. What Abodiea undertakes to do is show the landlord the pace, in time for him to act on it.
- A payment that fails is shown to both parties. The tenant is responsible for retrying it.
Management fees
- Tenants pay no fee to Abodiea, ever. A tenant pays rent, and only rent.
- A landlord pays a monthly management fee for a portfolio plan, sized by the number of properties he holds. Which plan applies to a given portfolio, and what it costs, is set in the catalogue and shown to you before you commit.
- The fee is charged monthly in advance through Paystack, from the payment method on the account. Current fees are shown in the app and on this website before you commit to a plan.
- A landlord may change plan at any time as the portfolio changes. Fees already charged for a period are not refunded, and the fee that applies is always the one published at the time it is charged.
- If a fee cannot be collected we will tell you and give you a reasonable time to fix it before restricting properties beyond what your current plan covers. Existing tenancies and the money already paid forward on them are never affected by a billing problem.
What you agree to
You agree not to:
- use Abodiea for anything unlawful, including money laundering;
- impersonate anyone, or claim a tenancy or property that is not yours;
- upload anything you do not have the right to upload, including photographs of a property you do not let;
- attempt to break, probe or overload the service, or get at data that is not yours;
- use the service to harass anyone, including a tenant in arrears.
Records and agreements
Abodiea produces receipts for payments and a tenancy agreement document for each tenancy, and makes them available to both parties as PDFs. These are records of what the parties have told Abodiea and what has been paid through it. They are not legal advice, and a tenancy agreement generated by Abodiea does not replace advice from a lawyer on your particular letting.
Availability
We work to keep Abodiea available, but we do not promise it will never be down. We may change or withdraw features, and where a change materially affects you we will give you reasonable notice in the app. Payments depend on Paystack and on the banks, and delays in their systems are outside our control.
Our liability
Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited under Nigerian law, including liability for fraud.
Subject to that, Abodiea is not liable for a tenant's failure to pay, for a landlord's conduct, for the terms or the performance of a tenancy agreement between them, or for loss of profit or of expected income. Our total liability to you in any twelve month period is limited to the management fees you paid us in that period, and for a tenant, who pays us nothing, to twenty thousand naira.
Ending this agreement
You may close your account at any time. A landlord who closes his account remains responsible for fees already due, and both parties keep access to the records of a tenancy for as long as the privacy policy says we keep them.
We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, that we reasonably believe is being used fraudulently, or where we are required to by law. Where we do, we will tell you why unless we are legally prevented from doing so, and we will not withhold the record of rent already paid forward.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and the courts of Nigeria have jurisdiction over any dispute. Nothing here removes a tenant's or a landlord's rights under Nigerian tenancy law.