The Managing Director of Buildwell International Company Limited (BICL), Engineer Afolabi Adedeji has attributed the high cost of housing to high interest rates by mortgage institutions.
According to him, access to inexpensive mortgage finance has become a big hurdle to cross if not an albatross to housing projects.

Adedeji said that the market survey his company conducted recently showed that average mortgage lending rate was in the neighbourhood of 19 percent per annum and added that this was one of the major reasons why housing is expensive.

His words: “Year 2007 did not witness any major change in the long standing relative neglect of the provision of low income mass housing for Nigerians. Access to inexpensive mortgage loans through the National Housing Fund (NHP) has also remained elusive if not cumbersome and tortuous, to state it mildly. There are many unmet needs of Nigerians in the housing sector especially low income mass housing for the poor and owner-occupier accommodation for the middle class families.

Access to inexpensive mortgage finance is a big hurdle if not a huge albatross. My market survey in the last few months indicated that the average mortgage lending rates are in the neighbourhood of 19 percent.This is killing for somebody who is building houses for commercial purposes. It is for this reason that rents are high in the country.”

Adedeji called on the Federal Government to compel the mortgage institutions to reduce their lending rate so that housing could be affordable to the low income earners.
He further said that since it was the responsibility of government to create enabling environment for its citizens to be comfortable, it should pump more money into the Federal Mortgage Bank so that finance would not be a hindrance to the activities of the National Housing Scheme.

On the controversy surrounding the housing estates which the Federal Government sold in Lagos, he said that the move by the eminent Lagosians to stand on the sale might send wrong signals to future participants in public-private partnership projects through out the country.