Real estate developer and executive chairman of JL Holdings, Dr James Orleans-Lindsay has renewed his call on government to establish a fund to support players in the real estate sector provide affordable housing units for Ghanaians.
A construction levy or fund, according to Dr Orleans-Lindsay, will afford developers lower interests on loans taken to build houses, leading to more affordable units being put up.
Dr James Orleans-Lindsay was speaking at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Ghana’s (CIMG) Evening with a Personality, on the topic ‘Marketing in the Real Estate Sector: Pricing and Affordability.’
The veteran estate developer feared most Ghanaians may not be able to benefit from the government’s affordable housing project because of their low income levels.
He estimated that about 80% of Ghanaians could not afford mortgages to own houses.
According to Dr Orleans-Lindsay, “Simple mathematics without putting any interest and cost of land would tell me that your two and three-bedroom homes are going to cost minimum $50,000, and as per the analysis that we’ve done, straight away it’s not affordable because affordable is supposed to be something below US$20,000.
“The nurse gets 1,400 cedis a month, the teacher 1,600 cedis, and by affordability, over 30% of household income should not be used to service your property, be it rent or purchase properties, so there’s nothing affordable in there,” he added.
Dr Orleans-Lindsay, however, outlined some solutions to tackle the increasing housing deficit. They included reliance on creative solutions, changing people’s perception of low-cost housing, technology intervention, state intervention, research and development, and digital marketing as a tool to drive the sector’s growth.
The real estate developer, however, maintained that “it would be highly impossible for the private developer to provide affordable houses for the mass population in need of homes and other types of spaces at current prevailing conditions such as high-interest rates, dollar instability, high land cost, high cost of material, etc.”
He, therefore, called for consensus building and innovative approaches, especially towards using local materials in housing delivery and government’s intervention.
Last Wednesday, the government, in partnership with the UN office for project service, cut the sod for the commencement of work on some 200,000 housing units estimated at $5 billion. That is in a bid to bridge the housing deficit, which currently stands at about 2.5 million housing units.
The CIMG Evening with a Personality brought together marketing practitioners to discuss price and affordability issues in the real estate sector.
Source: The Finder
