Between the high prices and the poor condition of some real estate properties in African cities, people are finding it difficult to get decent housing. With his platform Spleet, Akintola Adesanmi facilitates renting through a home loan solution.

Former product manager at Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (currently known as Guarantee Trust Holding Company) and eTranzact, a payments company, Akintola Adesanmi (pictured, right) has a strong background in banking and fintech. Since 2018, he has been running Spleet, a startup providing a platform where people have access to home loans and a wide selection of properties.

The goal is to provide a solution that allows tenants to find understanding landlords. However, while Spleet was a good plan for tenants, it was not quite the same for landlords. It took the solution 15 months to integrate 16 landlords and about 101 spaces on the platform. The co-founder said he realized that most landlords prefer to receive their lease once rather than 12 times a year to mitigate the risk of default. He co-founded Spleet with Daniella Ajala (pictured, left).

“Growth was slow on the landlords’ side. We just couldn’t add as many landlords as we wanted to on time. But on the tenants’ side, we had great occupancy rates—an average of 90% month-on-month occupancy rates,” Adesanmi told TechCabal. So it became clear that this model would not be sustainable in the long run. After more than 3 years of trying to evolve his market, Akintola Adesanmi wanted to tailor his offering to both tenants and owners. To do so, he applied in 2021 to the accelerator program of MetaProp, a New York-based VC firm focused on the real estate technology industry. Spleet became the first African startup to complete the six-month program, which ended last month, and on March 15, the startup announced $625,000 in pre-seed funding led by MetaProp VC with participation from several investment bodies.

Spleet's new business model now allows tenants to apply for a loan to pay the full amount of the rent, then spread the repayment over up to 12 months. In this way, tenants can continue to pay the rent monthly and landlords who want annual payments can also be satisfied. This solution quickly won over new customers, and Akintola Adesanmi was able to get back on track. A beta version of Spleet's offering was launched this month, and it has already logged more than $10,000 in applications.

Now, the entrepreneur intends to make Spleet the go-to platform for residential real estate in Africa, especially since many African countries are affected by the housing deficit problem, with rental costs sometimes very high.

Aïsha Moyouzame