FG urges mortgage bankers to innovate on solutions to tackle housing crisis

The Federal Government has urged mortgage banking operators to innovate on creative solutions that will enable Nigeria to tackle its housing crisis reflected in the ballooning housing deficit and homelessness.

Minister of housing and urban development, Ahmed Dangiwa, who made the call, noted that the country’s current economic challenges call for innovative solutions that would make housing finance more easily accessible to Nigerians, and at affordable rates.

The minister spoke at the 20th edition of the annual Mortgage Banking CEOs Retreat in Abuja recently. “Chief executives of mortgage banks must find new ways to navigate the harsh macro-economic environment and ensure that ordinary Nigerians, especially those in the low-and-medium-income bracket, can access the finance they need for homeownership,” he said.

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Continuing, Dangiwa said, “while the government works to fix this macro-economic challenge, I still believe that, as CEOs of mortgage banks, you can find creative ways to develop innovative mortgage products that are responsive to Nigeria’s current economic situation. This includes adopting rent-to-own mortgage options, flexible monthly mortgage loan repayments to make commercial loans more affordable.”

The minister said he was worried that the capital market had not been maximally tapped to raise long term funds to refinance mortgage loans and to explore more creative ways to make mortgages more affordable.

He believes that, as leaders, mortgage banking operators must not only see provision of housing and home loans from a business and profit perspective, but also see expanding access to affordable mortgages as a moral imperative.

The operators, he said, must do all they could even in these difficult times to ensure that not only the elites, but Nigerians within the low- and medium-income segments have access to affordable mortgages.

This edition of the annual retreat had as theme, ‘Advancing Sustainable and Affordable Housing in Nigeria: Navigating Macro-Economic, Legislative, and Policy Frontiers’ which clearly captured current needs in the housing sector.

The theme was meant to emphasize the need for all players to find ways to navigate the macro, legal and policy bottlenecks and, according to the minister, it spoke to the need for innovation. “It speaks to the need for creativity and to the need for effective leadership at every point in the value chain. This is because leaders are supposed to make progress despite challenges; they are also supposed to navigate the complexities of situations to make progress,” he added.

Aware of the cost of funding and its impact on lending rate, which is a reflection of the broader economic reality, the minister expressed confidence in the willingness of the federal government to drive economic growth and create a more friendly environment for mortgage banking to thrive in Nigeria.

He assured the operators that the jinx of macro-economic, legislative and policy issues that had held down the growth of effective housing delivery in the country would be broken by the current government.

Earlier, Ebilate Mac-Yoroki, President of the Mortgage Banking Association of Nigeria (MBAN), had explained that the retreat provided a platform for deliberation in order to harness policies and partnerships aimed to create products that would enhance the extension of access to affordable housing finance to a larger segment of the Nigerian populace.

On his part, Kehinde Ogundimu, MD/CEO, Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC), admitted that the mortgage industry had performed below expectation, despite efforts by the operators.

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“We must find ways to make affordable housing delivery work, starting with lowering the cost of lending. There’s nowhere in the world that mortgage thrives with double-digit interest rates,” he said.

Present at the retreat were MD/CEO, Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), the leadership of Family Homes Fund Limited (FHFL), those of Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN), heads of mortgage banks and institutions, and representatives of regulatory bodies.