Landlord & Agent Terms and Declaration

01Who may list a house

You may list a house on Nkwata if you are the owner, or if the owner has authorised you to let it on their behalf — as a caretaker, a family member acting for an owner, or an agent holding a mandate.

You must be at least 18 years old, and you must confirm a phone number before anything you submit can go live. There are no anonymous listings on Nkwata and there never will be.

02What you are declaring

Each time you submit a listing you declare that:

• the house exists, at the location you pinned, and you have been inside it;
• you own it, or you are authorised by the owner to let it;
• it is genuinely available on the date you submit;
• the rent, the advance and the caution you have entered are the real figures, and there is no further payment you intend to ask for;
• the photographs are of this house, taken within the last twelve months;
• nobody else is advertising the same house as available through another person on Nkwata.

This is a declaration, not a formality. A false declaration is grounds for immediate removal, and for the removal of every other listing on your account.

03No displacement fees. Ever.

This is the practice that makes house-hunting in Cameroon exhausting and expensive, and abolishing it on this platform is the main reason Nkwata exists. A seeker has already paid to unlock your contact. Asking them to pay again before they have seen a door is not a business practice we will host.

The platform cannot even record such a fee: the field that would hold it is fixed at zero in the database, so it cannot be switched on in the software later. That is deliberate.

One upheld report of a displacement fee removes every listing on your account. There is no second warning, because for the seeker there was no first one.

04Showing your fee before the seeker calls

A legitimate agent's commission is not a displacement fee, and Nkwata does not object to it. What we require is that it is declared, in figures, on the listing, before the seeker pays anything.

Every listing carries one of three statements, which the seeker sees on the card:

• Direct from the owner — there is no agent and no commission;
• A caretaker shows it, no fee — a caretaker holds the keys and charges the seeker nothing;
• Agent fee: [amount] FCFA — an agent is involved, and this is exactly what they will ask for.

Charging more than the amount you declared is treated as a false declaration under section 02.

05Keeping the listing true

A house that has been taken must be switched off. There is a single button for this, and using it stops your billing immediately — so telling the truth costs you nothing and saves you money.

Every fortnight Nkwata will ask you, by WhatsApp or SMS, whether the house is still available. One tap answers it. If you do not answer within five days the listing pauses itself and your billing pauses with it. Nothing is deleted, and switching it back on takes one tap too.

If a house has been off the platform for a long time, or its photographs are more than twelve months old, we will ask for fresh pictures before it goes live again.

06What it costs you

Listing is charged per house, per month, and only while the house is live. A paused or taken house costs nothing. There is no joining fee, no commission on any tenancy, and no charge for the enquiries you receive.

Optional and clearly priced: professional photography and walkthrough video, a field verification visit, and featured placement. Featured placement may raise where a listing appears. It will never disguise a verification tier or an availability status — a promoted listing that is not verified still says so.

The current prices are shown in your dashboard before you are charged anything.

07Photographs and video

You keep ownership of the photographs and video you upload. By uploading them you give Nkwata permission to display them on the platform, in search results, and in marketing for the platform, for as long as the listing exists and for a reasonable period afterwards.

You confirm that you took them or have the right to use them, and that they show this house and no other.

Where Nkwata photographs a house as a paid service, Nkwata owns those images and licenses them back to you to use freely for that house.

08Verification tiers

Every listing shows how far it has been checked, and the tier is earned rather than bought:

• Phone confirmed — you control a real phone number;
• ID confirmed — you have shown a national ID that matches your account;
• Owner confirmed — you have shown a land title, a rates or utility receipt in your name, a notarised attestation, or an owner's mandate;
• Nkwata verified — a person from Nkwata stood in the house, confirmed the pin and took the photographs.

A higher tier ranks better and gets more calls. That is the whole incentive, and it is why we publish the ladder instead of simply printing the word "verified" on everything.

Documents you upload for verification are held privately and are never shown to seekers or to other listers.

09Caretakers and staff

You may appoint a caretaker for a house, and you may run your properties under one or more named businesses with staff who help you manage them.

Whatever you delegate, four things remain yours alone and cannot be given away: changing the rent, receiving money, transferring or deleting a property, and moving its location. This is enforced in the platform itself, not by a policy document, so nobody you appoint can do any of those things even by mistake.

You remain responsible for what the people you appoint do on your listings.

10Reports, strikes and suspension

Any seeker can report a listing. Reports are read by a person.

Where a report is upheld — the house was already taken, it was not the house shown, the price was wrong, the contact could not be reached, or money was asked for to view it — the seeker's unlock fee is refunded automatically, without them having to ask, and the listing is paused.

Repeated upheld reports suspend the account. Agents carrying many listings are held to this most strictly, because they carry the most risk to the most people.

11What Nkwata does not do

Nkwata is a noticeboard. It is not an estate agent, a property manager, a landlord or a broker.

We do not negotiate for you, we take no commission on any tenancy, and we never receive or hold rent, deposits or caution money. Every payment between you and a tenant is between you and that tenant.

We check what we reasonably can and we publish how far we checked. We do not guarantee any tenant, and verification is not a reference.

12Your responsibility

You are responsible for the accuracy of everything you publish, for complying with Cameroonian law in letting your property, and for any agreement you enter into with a tenant.

If a claim is brought against Nkwata because something you declared was untrue, you are responsible for it.

13Ending your use

You may remove your listings and close your account at any time. Billing stops when the last live listing is switched off.

We may suspend or end your use of Nkwata if you break these terms, and we will tell you why.

Questions about this document: [CONTACT EMAIL] or [YOUR PHONE].