Let’s deepen mortgage market - SSNIT boss

The Director General of SSNIT, Ernest Thompson, has emphasised the need for government to deepen the financial mortgage market in order to get more salaried workers to own homes.

“When they deepen the financial mortgage market, once you earn a salary you can go to HFC, Ghana Home Loans they will give you a mortgage, and they will take it from your salary a little at a time. But at least you have got an asset you are owning. That is the area we need to take a look at.” he told B&FT.

While conceding that the Finance Ministry is embarking on such an initiative, Mr. Thompson said efforts need be stepped-up to develop it more in order to cover more people as happens in Europe.

“When your friends in London tell you they own houses, it is not houses they took their money and went and bought. It is through a mortgage, and all of us should be able to own a house through mortgage - once you are earning a salary - and we are looking forward to a lot of people using this mechanism.”

SSNIT, he said, will continue do its bit by undertaking various housing projects; adding that a lot of workers are expected to benefit from over-1,500 SSNIT housing units nearing completion across the country.

“We are just finishing the Affordable Housing project at Borteyman. It is almost ninety percent complete. We just moved last week to Asuoyeboa, where we are finishing flats that were not completed. So SSNIT will continue to play its role in the housing industry,” he stressed.

Available data indicate that the mortgage to GDP ratio in Ghana stands at a paltry 0.5 percent, whereas the ratio stands at 88 percent in the UK and 77 percent in the United States. Also, in Ghana mortgage loan penetration stands at 3 only percent.

Over the past decade there has been a 55.5 percent increment in the demand for housing, which has now put the housing backlog at about 1.7million.

Government’s ongoing projects are expected to provide only 10,000 housing units in the next two years. But with more than 80 percent of Ghanaians unable to afford homes or qualify for a mortgage, most real estate developers focus on the high end of the market -- putting a majority of the populace in a situation where they have to rent homes.

The mortgage market has been one of the biggest sufferers in the cedi’s battles for stability against the major trading currencies, especially the dollar.

With more Ghanaians preferring dollar-denominated mortgages than cedi-backed ones due to the lower interest rates, a lot of mortgage holders suffered during the cyclical first-quarter cedi depreciation over the last three years, since the cost of servicing their mortgages went up.

This, according to industry analysts, has led to a general slowdown in the mortgage market -- with Ghanaians uncertain about the market and adopting ‘a-wait-and-see-attitude’.