Estate Valuer Seeks Collective Mortgage Funding System

Worried by the rate of hardship faced by intending developers to have access to funds for housing development through mortgage, a real estate practitioner in Port Harcourt, Mr Hyacinth Oseji, has urged the Rivers State Government and other relevant organisations in the state to work out a policy were insurance companies, cooperative societies, pension funds managers and other related agencies that usually have access to long-term funds to make such funds available to mortgage institutions as is applicable in other parts of the world.

He said that in advanced countries, long-term funds are gotten from building societies and insurance companies and are used to fund long-term projects like housing development.

Oseji, a member of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) and a partner in Osas and Oseji an estate surveyor  firm, in an interview with The Tide explained that mortgage is a long-term loan with 10-50 years repayment period.

The estate valuer also posited that interest rate for mortgage must be kept low, if there must be a remarkable impact in housing development.  “interest rate should be attractive such that will arouse the interest of the people. Government should do everything possible to make interest rate on mortgage low”, he said.

Oseji also urged government to provide funds and encourage people to contribute to the poor for social housing and sell them at lower rates.

He also pointed out that Rivers State Government in particular must provide a mortgage for the 1000 housing units it has promises for the low-income earners at the Greater Port Harcourt City Development Authority (GPHCDA), if the low income housing thing must work as projected.

On what has been keeping the real estate profession visible; he said the process of registering estate surveyors is liberal and that they deal on the finished product in the housing sector, which makes their services needed almost everywhere.

Corlins Walter