PurposeThe factors affecting housing rent and take-up had been largely examined in a cluster. This leaves a dearth of knowledge on the influences of other disparate factors, such as the aesthetics of the building facade. This paper examines the effects of a deteriorated external wall paint on the tenants, rent and take-up of housing located in a high-end housing estate in Akure, Nigeria. The logic is to examine the place of aesthetics among the general factors affecting take-up and rental prices.Design/methodology/approachData were collected through census from 133 respondents residing in houses with deteriorated external wall paint. It applied both descriptive and multinomial logistic regression (MLR) to analyse the data.FindingsFindings reveal that close to 60% of the respondents were psychologically affected by the visible deterioration of external wall paint. This translated to a significance reduction in rent compared with the rental prices of similar houses the appearance of which was not deteriorated. Generally, this study found that aesthetics paled into insignificance in the analysis of the general factors affecting housing take-up and rent. However, it ranked first when these were analysed on the structural characteristics of the house only. This is consistent with findings from the MLR parameter estimate, which shows that those who were psychologically affected are more likely to pay a 15% increase in their current rent to take up a similar house without paint deterioration.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study have implications on practice and theory. First, while the location mantra is a key determinant of rental prices in theory, in practice, rent on comparable houses could differ if the aesthetics of the external wall paint is compromised. This implies an avoidable loss of rent to the owner of a property who compromises the aesthetic quality of the external wall paint in a high-end location where affordability is arguably high. The implication on public authority is that a lower rent may have a negative implication on government revenue and specifically property tax which is normally based on market rent of a property.Originality/valueA novel quality of the study is that it separates the structural characteristics of a house from the general factors in order to examine the specific effect of deteriorated aesthetics of external wall paint on take-up and rent.