Start with the honest number: out of more than twenty licensed non-interest financial institutions in Nigeria, exactly three publish a retail home finance product. Jaiz Bank, Lotus Bank and The Alternative Bank will finance a house without interest. TAJBank, Nigeria's second-largest non-interest bank, offers no retail mortgage at all; its residential financing runs through Istisna construction contracts on the corporate side. Summit Bank markets homes under its lease-to-own product, but with a 60-month maximum tenor that prices out almost any real property. That is the entire market as of our August 4, 2026 review.
This guide walks through each product with its published terms, explains the structures behind them, and does the arithmetic the marketing pages avoid. If you want the structural theory first, read our Murabaha vs Ijarah vs diminishing Musharakah comparison alongside this.
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Why the market is this small
Nigeria's mortgage market as a whole is tiny relative to the population, and home purchase is overwhelmingly a cash and incremental-build affair. Non-interest banking, meanwhile, is young: Jaiz began operating in 2012, Lotus in 2021, The Alternative Bank became a standalone licensed bank in July 2023, and Summit only opened its doors in November 2025. Balance sheets are growing fast (Jaiz crossed N1.08 trillion in assets at end-2024, The Alternative Bank grew 68% to N307.5 billion in the same year), but home finance is long-tenor, capital-hungry lending, and these are still mid-sized banks in a high-rate economy. The result is a market with real products but short tenors, high equity requirements and, with one partial exception, no published pricing.
The three real products, side by side
| Jaiz Home Finance | LOTUS Homes | AltBank Home Finance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Structure | Diminishing Musharakah with Ijara (rent-to-own) | Murabaha; Ijara wa Iqtina also cited | Lease-based (Ijarah family) |
| Maximum tenor | 7 years | 20 years per financing page; 10 years per retail page | 10 years |
| Equity required | Minimum 20% | 20-30% (the bank's own pages conflict) | Not published |
| Financing cap | Not published | 70-80% of property value | Property value up to N80,000,000 |
| Published rate | None | None | None |
| Who qualifies | Salaried, salary domiciliation | Ages 24-50; salaried, self-employed 8 yrs, business owners 5 yrs | Confirmed employees of reputable organizations |
All terms above come from the banks' own product pages, retrieved August 4, 2026. Notice what is missing from every column: a rental rate, a markup benchmark, a sample repayment schedule. Not one Nigerian bank publishes what its home finance actually costs. Every negotiation happens inside a branch, and the only external anchors you have are the sovereign sukuk curve (the May 2025 FGN Ijarah sukuk paid a 19.75% rental rate) and the one Jaiz product with published pricing, EnerJaiz solar finance, which carries a 28-30% per annum markup. Home finance will be priced in that neighborhood of reality, not in the single digits.
Jaiz: the right structure, the shortest runway
Jaiz Home Finance uses Ijara Muntahiyya Bittamleek combined with a diminishing partnership, which is the structure most scholars are most comfortable with for home purchase. You and the bank co-own the house, you pay rent on the bank's share, and you buy that share down until the house is yours. The catch is the tenor: seven years maximum. Spread N40 million of financing over 84 months and the monthly principal alone is nearly N480,000 before any rent. This is a product for high earners who want clean ownership mechanics, not for first-time buyers stretching a salary. Our full Jaiz Home Finance review runs the details.
Lotus: the longest tenor, if you can pin it down
LOTUS Homes is the only product in Nigeria advertising a 20-year non-interest home finance tenor, and it covers construction as well as purchase. It is also the product with the strangest disclosure problem: the bank's financing page says up to 20 years with 70% financing and 30% equity, while its retail facilities page says up to 10 years with 80% financing and 20% equity. Both pages were live on August 4, 2026. Bring the more generous reading into the branch as your anchor and get the resolution in writing. The full LOTUS Homes review covers eligibility, which spans salaried applicants and self-employed people with eight years of track record.
The Alternative Bank: the diaspora specialist with a cap
AltBank's Home Finance caps supported property values at N80 million and restricts eligibility to confirmed employees, which deliberately points the product at attainable first homes rather than Ikoyi trophy assets. Its genuinely distinctive feature is the Diaspora Home Finance variant, where the bank appoints qualified property managers to run the property for Nigerians abroad. Tenor tops out at 10 years. We cover it fully in the AltBank Home Finance review and in our diaspora home finance guide.
What no bank will tell you upfront
- Total cost is invisible until you apply. No rental rate, markup or sample schedule is published by any of the three banks. Demand the full repayment schedule in writing before committing to anything.
- Equity requirements are real money. At 20-30% of property value, a N60 million home needs N12-18 million in cash before the bank moves.
- Salary domiciliation is near-universal. Jaiz requires it, Lotus underwrites with it, AltBank restricts to confirmed employees. Self-employed buyers have essentially one door: Lotus, with eight years of documented business history.
- Takaful, not conventional insurance, covers the property at Lotus, and AltBank uses takaful across its financing stack. Budget for it; it is a genuine cost on top of the rent or markup.
- Short tenors change the math completely. Seven years at Jaiz and ten at AltBank mean monthly commitments two to three times what a 20-year schedule would produce.
What about the National Housing Fund?
The NHF is Nigeria's statutory housing contribution scheme, and its standard loan products are interest-bearing, which is precisely the problem for a Muslim contributor. Whether a genuinely non-interest window exists in operational form is a question we address honestly, with what can and cannot be verified, in our NHF halal guide.
The paths most Nigerians actually take
Bank home finance is one route among several, and statistically the least common one. Most Nigerian homes are built incrementally, block by block, over years, funded by savings. That path has halal financing angles of its own, from building-material Murabaha to construction Istisna, which we map in building your own house the halal way. Cooperative and rent-to-own arrangements are covered in our rent-to-own and cooperative housing guide. And if you want to see what the budget math looks like at real price points, read what a N50 million or N100 million house really costs.
The bottom line
Halal home financing exists in Nigeria in 2026. It is real, it is structurally sound, and it is scarce, short and opaque. If you are salaried, can fund 20-30% equity, and can carry a large monthly payment for 7-10 years (or persuade Lotus to honor its 20-year page), you have three credible counterparties. Get quotes from all three for the same property, force each bank to put the total repayment figure on paper, and compare against the cost of building incrementally with cash. The bank that wins should win on a number you can see, not on a brochure. Browse all products in our home financing directory.
Frequently asked questions
Is Islamic home finance in Nigeria actually cheaper than a conventional mortgage?
Usually not, and honest framing matters here. Non-interest banks fund themselves in the same high-rate naira economy as everyone else, and the one published Jaiz retail markup (28-30% on EnerJaiz) sits in the same neighborhood as conventional consumer lending. What the halal products change is the structure: a fixed price or a declining rent instead of a compounding balance, no penalty-interest spiral, and contracts a Muslim can sign without compromise. Choose them for that, and negotiate hard on cost, because the cost is not automatically better.
Can a self-employed person get halal home finance?
Realistically only at Lotus, whose published eligibility admits self-employed applicants with eight years of documented business history and business owners with five. Jaiz builds its product around salary domiciliation, and AltBank restricts to confirmed employees. If you are self-employed and serious, start formalizing now: banked turnover, CAC registration and clean statements are the application, whatever the brochure says.
Compare providers in your state
See side-by-side comparisons of Shariah-compliant products, or let our matcher recommend the best options for your situation.
What happens if I miss payments?
Structurally, a compliant contract cannot grow your debt: a consummated Murabaha price is fixed, and rent owed is rent owed, without compounding. But default still has consequences: banks hold the asset or its title as security and can enforce it, and Nigeria's GSI framework lets them recover from your other accounts. Ask every bank for its written default and restructuring policy before signing; the good ones route late-payment charges to charity rather than income, and you want that in the contract.