Address housing problems – Gov’t told

James Bradbury, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of James Bradbury Property Services, has urged government to put the appropriate measures in place to address the housing problems in the country.

According to him, the high cost of renting or owning a house was worrisome.

Mr Bradbury, who spoke to BUSINESS GUIDE at the Swiss-Ghana Chamber of Commerce cocktail meeting in Accra, said the estate industry focuses on making astronomical profits and not helping government to solve the housing problems.

“The middle-income population in Ghana keeps increasing, but there is no estate developer that is really focused on providing affordable housing for them,” he said.

Mr. Bradbury said the high cost of building materials, among others, had contributed to the high cost of home-ownship in Ghana, stating that “looking for funding to build the affordable houses is very difficult.”

He said the affordable housing projects have failed to materialize because of the lack of monitoring.

“If you bring in a contractor to build affordable housing without monitoring him, then by all means he will chop the money.

“But if government says it is responsible for the affordable housing and he monitors them, then there is no way the contractor will chop the money because he knows he is being monitored,” he said.

He said the vision of his company is to provide a “one stop” property service from investment mortgages, finance, sales, rentals, renovations, management to maintenance.

Mr Bradbury said the company currently provides residential and commercial real estate services with the aim of maintaining standards.

Currently, the country’s housing shortfall, which is estimated at 1.7 million units, is expected to grow to 2 million by 2020.

This means the country requires a minimum annual delivery of about 170,000 units for the next 10 years to address the housing deficit.