Real Estate Developers want government to establish a special fund to provide financial support for their operations. This, according to them should provide the badly needed long-term funds to address the country’s housing deficit.

This fund is also expected to complement the Real Estate Investment Trust which the Securities and Exchange Commission is putting in place the requisite regulatory framework for interested private sector operators.

Executive Chairman of Real Estate firm, Comet Properties Nana Odeneho Kyeremanteng explains to Joy Business the fund when established would reduce their cost of operations to make housing more affordable.

The housing fund is a panacea to our innovation in housing delivery and that government should be able to create it with at least 2 % of the national budget. This year’s budget is 15 billion and 2 % of it would be 300 million. It would have helped us to start.

“Not the government intervening by delivering the houses themselves but we’ll establish a housing authority that will be the secondary mortgage institution that will hold on funds, give them to the bank, the banks will then have zero risk in terms of mortgages. This will enable young people can easily get long term funds or mortgage funds that are cheaper” he said.

“This could have about 6% interest spread over a 30 year period with a 5% or 10% down payment so that the money you are going to use to rent a house will be used as a deposit for your equity in that property, then you take it for thirty years” he concluded.