‘17m housing deficit needs backup data’
Emmanuel Olabode Afolayan, President of REDAN, stated this on Thursday at the launch of the 10,000 Nigerian Mortgage Refinancing Company (NMRC) housing mortgage scheme in Abuja.He said property developers “don’t rely on what they say in terms of deficits. We want to know specifics, when you say 17 million, I don’t know where. “Is it […]
Emmanuel Olabode Afolayan, President of REDAN, stated this on Thursday at the launch of the 10,000 Nigerian Mortgage Refinancing Company (NMRC) housing mortgage scheme in Abuja.
He said property developers “don’t rely on what they say in terms of deficits. We want to know specifics, when you say 17 million, I don’t know where.
“Is it 17 million in Lagos, Calabar or where, we want to narrow it down, the location, the type, the value of houses that will reflect the exact demand of people and not just the demand this time around.”
Afolayan said the housing demand must be married with the mix. “The fact that you have three wives and 12 children doesn’t mean that a five-bedroom flat must be provided for you.
“We must narrow it down to what you can effectively pay for or meet up with in terms of your economic capability.”
“The units of houses that are required at a particular location, the cost of the house, the type and the exact beneficiary of the would-be houses. These are things that are much better and likely to drive investments,” he said.
The REDAN President said housing delivery is a chain and it involves virtually everybody from the consumer to the developer and those who create the mortgages will not be effective except there is a very robust mortgage system particularly in Nigeria where the pay is a little bit low and so finance is coming up with housing from the demand angle and not supply angle.
“The man who wants to buy has to approach his mortgage just like what is in developed countries and the mortgage lender after appraising the beneficiary has already indicated his approval that so and so amount of mortgages are available. Should the mortgage aspects be ready, that will drive the supply angle,” he said.