Homeownership still mirage despite 48% mortgage market growth to N516bn

Owning a home is still a dream for many Nigerians despite a recent revelation by mortgage industry operators that the size of the mortgage market in the country has, in the past six years, grown about 48 percent to N518.76 billion in 2016, up from N284 billion in 2010.

For Nigeria’s 170 million people, there are only 13.7million housing units and 11.5 million units out of this number are rented while only 5 percent of the entire stock are currently financed with a mortgage, meaning that 95 percent of this stock is self-built.
Following the central bank of Nigeria (CBN) revised guidelines, the PMBs were recapitalized, raising their capital base from the statutory N100 million to N2.5 billion for those operating regionally and N5 billion for those licensed to operate nationally. This apparently created relative liquidity in the industry.
But, in spite of this, many home seekers that applied for home finance through the NHF have been left wallowing in the dark. The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) which supervises the operations of the fund explained recently that it has in its books a loan repayment default on NHF and Estate Development Loan (EDL) by primary mortgage banks (PMBs) and real estate developers totalling N70 billion.
The loan, it disclosed, comprises unremitted equity contributions collected by the PMBs from the housing loan seekers who applied for NHF, and also loans granted to estate developers through its estate development loan scheme.

CHUKA UROKO