Estate Surveyor Tasks Govt On Low Cost Housing

An Estate Surveyor and
Valuer in Port Harcourt, Morgan Amakiri, has called on the state and federal governments to focus more attention on providing low cost houses for the people, if the gap in housing deficit must be bridged.
Amakiri, who was reacting to the mortgage situation in Nigeria as it affects housing development and delivery, in an interview with The Tide, on Monday, said that time has come when governments at both levels will face the reality on ground and begin to address the housing needs.
He said the huge population of the society who are in need of housing falls within the low-income group, and that most of them are public servants, and hence, government’s attention should go mostly to low cost housing like one and two flats.
According to him, these low cost houses should be within the range of N2 million and N5 million, which an average civil servant will be able to pay without burden on a good mortgage arrangement where he/she can pay back on a monthly basis over a long period of about 15 to 20 years.
He said, “when you hear about high deficit in housing, it mostly reflects the low-income earners who cannot afford it. The people who are really in difficulty and are in need of these houses and mortgage schemes are the low income earners. So government should focus on them. They are the most populous in the society.”
To make the process easier for them, Amakiri said that government should build the low-cost houses and give them out to the people, particularly to civil servants on a proper mortgage arrangement where the government can recover the money on monthly basis from the beneficiaries, just like the case in Elekahia Housing Estate some years back.
Alternatively, he said that government should get land, allocate same to public servants and those who need them, with certificates of occupancy (C of Os) and other services provided.
He said the land with C of O can serve as collateral for them to obtain loan to build their houses and stressed that the process of getting C of O should be made easier.
The real estate expert, however, maintained that Mortgage System is the only system that can give long-term loan and can spread the payment over the years on monthly basis, adding that in advanced countries like the United Kingdom, houses are bought through mortgage.

Corlins Walter