The Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN) has urged the federal government to repeal the foreclosure and titling laws as a deliberate policy to make financing affordable housing realizable.
President of AHCN, Dr. Victor Onukwugha, who spoke at the 104th council meeting of the association with the theme ‘Financing Affordable Housing Development in a Depressed Economy’, in Abuja Thurday, also called on the National Assembly to initiate the process of reviewing the laws.
He said the housing sector is hamstrung by obsolete legislation that stifles funding.
“The government must have the political will to revise laws that prohibit funding. The foreclosure law and titling are some of the laws that need to be repealed. The National Assembly has to initiate that and it must take urgent effect. If that is not done, it will impact the availability of funding through mortgages because we do not have mortgage institutions that are thriving well here and we cannot attract direct foreign investment through this because people do not have confidence in the enabling environment we have for housing delivery,” he said.
He also said the meeting was bothered about the cost of building materials, especially cement, and charged the government to liberalise its production.
“We are also talking about materials and the major thing on the materials’ list is cement but we have a monopoly of cement production by one person. We can liberalise the production of cement which can crash the price of cement because we have limestone everywhere.
“If government can encourage cottage production of cement, that can bring down the price of cement to N1000 per bag. How can a house be affordable when we are selling cement for N4000, it cannot be affordable,” the president added.
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