Ecobank Ghana and Cities and Habitats, developers of the Planned Cities Extension Project, have partnered to launch a new home ownership package called the Rent-To-Own Boafoɔ Home Ownership Package.
The package was carefully designed to actualise the theme for year’s World Habitat Day celebrations, which is: ‘Mind the Gap. Leave No One and Place Behind’. Besides, the theme sits perfectly well with Cities and Habitats’ Rent-to-Own housing scheme, which seeks to help channel resources and energies to reduce Ghana’s housing deficit and shape Ghana’s urban future.
Ghana’s housing deficit is estimated at 1.8 million, and the 2021 Ghana Population and Housing Census revealed that over 60 percent of Ghanaians live in dilapidated and uncompleted structures. Those persons have been left behind and they are the ones Cities and Habitats is targetting with the new innovative package.
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.
Project Manager for Cities and Habitats, Daniel Ohene Aidoo, in introducing the package, said 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 percent required under the scheme before they are given occupancy. The other key benefit under this package is that Cities and Habitats is giving 15 percent discount on the required 20 percent 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 GH¢1,250 for a one-bedroom apartment expandable to three bedrooms. The properties under this package will be located within the Planned Cities Extension enclaves around the country. The first one is at Prampram in Accra, where several properties are already at different stages of completion, and about 50 are almost ready to be delivered to owners this year.
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 do so.
He further noted that it falls in line with the bank’s objectives to provide various options for Ghanaians to own valuable properties, so they are happy to be partners, particularly because it helps to bridge the huge housing gap. “We, at Ecobank, offer a number of options for home seekers, and we believe that the Rent-to-Own Boafoɔ Package is one option that promises to deliver decent and affordable homes to many low-income Ghanaians,” he stated.
Dr. Botchway therefore called on all Ghanaians to take advantage of the Cities and Habitats/Ecobank Rent-to-Own Boafo Package, saying that the housing gap can only be bridged when individuals take advantage of such opportunities to own properties.
House deficit
Ghana Statistical Services (GSS) estimates that the country’s housing deficit over the last 50 years continually witnessed an upward trend from 1 million to 2.8 million between 1950 and 2010. However, the 2021 Ghana Population and Housing Census on structures, housing conditions and facilities from the GSS showed a reversal in the housing deficit by 33 percent.
This, according to GSS, points to possibly some of the interventions that are happening both at the governmental and the private sector levels. Currently, the gap stands at 1.8 million, and government has laid out a few more interventions to further bridge it.
Daniel Ohene Aidoo believes innovation and strategic management, rather than funding, hold to the key to bridging the huge housing gap, and he wants government to engage private sector players with track record to chart the way forward.
