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| Daniel Ohene Aidoo, Project Manager of the company |
Cities and Habitats, developers of the Planned Cities Extension Project, and Ecobank Ghana Plc. have partnered to launch a new home ownership package called the RENT-TO-OWN BOAFOƆ HOME OWNERSHIP PACKAGE.
This initiative forms part of the 2022 World Habitat Day celebrations, which was under the theme “Mind the Gap. Leave No One and Place Behind”. The theme is in line with what Cities and Habitats seeks to do to help allocate resources and energies in order to help reduce Ghana’s housing deficit and also shape Ghana’s urban future as underpinned by their slogan.
The Rent-To-Own Boafoɔ Home Ownership Package is a payment method planned to ease the financial burden of home seekers by affording them early occupancy of the property within eighteen (18) months from the payment of the initial deposit.
The Project Manager of the company, Daniel Ohene Aidoo in introducing the package said that it has always been the desire of the project to find sound and workable solutions to ensure that home ownership is made easy for all.
The Rent-To-Own Boafoɔ Home Ownership Package according to the project manager seeks to help home seekers to fast-track access to their homes with the help of the bank by raising the 20% required under the scheme before they are given occupancy.
The other key benefit under this package is that, Cities and Habitats is giving 15% discount on the required 20% initial deposit to all home seekers who wish to be supported by Ecobank for any type of house listed under the package.
The minimum amount that clients are expected to pay as ‘monthly rent’ is about GHc1,250 for a one-bedroom apartment expandable to three bedrooms.
Dr. Edward Botchway, Executive Director - Consumer Banking Ecobank Ghana and Regional Head of Consumer Banking for Anglophone West Africa (AWA) on his part, indicated that the Rent-To-Own Boafoɔ Home Ownership Package by Cities and Habitats is a great initiative which will make many people who hitherto could not afford their own homes to do so.
He further said that it falls in line with the bank’s objectives so they are happy to be partnering it and therefore called on all to take advantage of the Cities and Habitats/Ecobank Rent-to-Own Boafo package and the housing challenge in the country can only be solved when all stakeholders contribute their quota. According to him, Ecobank Ghana through this partnership will offer the requisite funding as required to clients.
Research by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) revealed that the country’s housing deficit in the last 50-year period continually witnessed an upward trend from one million to 2.8 million between 1950 and 2010.
However, the 2021 Population and Housing Census data on structures, housing conditions and facilities as presented by the GSS showed a reversal in the housing deficit by 33 per cent.
This, according to GSS, points to possibly some of the interventions that are happening both at the governmental and the private sector levels.
This, Aidoo advised that, stakeholders in the housing industry need to come up with strategic and deliberate plans to help deal with the housing deficit in the country. “If this is not done, the cities will be filled with slums in the near future,” he warned.
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