By Ladi Patrick
The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) has solicited a stronger partnership with state governments to provide housing to Nigerian workers within the low and medium-income brackets.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of FMBN, Arc. Ahmed Dangiwa made the call during a meeting with the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) in Abuja recently.
A statement signed by the Group Head, Corporate Communications, FMBN, Ahmed Abubakar quoted Dangiwa as saying that FMBN is strategically positioned to energize state governments in a sustainable and cost-effective manner on the back of its wide portfolio of affordable housing products.
He said the partnership will enable state governments to better take advantage of its strategic financing windows for real estate construction and decades old institutional experience in social housing provisioning.
“This includes stronger support and participation of states in the National Housing Fund (NHF) scheme, provision of unencumbered land for the execution of strategic FMBN affordable collaborative housing schemes as well as support for the elimination of high costs and systemic bottlenecks to title perfection and governor’s consent to mortgage transactions at the state level amongst others.”
He said NHF housing loan of up to N15million payable over a 30-year period at best market interest rate of 6% per annum; and NHF individual construction loan at 9% interest rate per annum with a 15-year tenor will help.
Other convenient housing loan products include rent-to-own scheme which allows beneficiaries to move into FMBN owned houses and pay back in monthly instalments over a 15-year period at single digit interest rates with no equity requirement and the home renovation loans where up to N1 million is given to NHF contributors who already own their homes to carry out necessary improvements and pay back over five years.
“Other unique advantage includes the availability of zero equity contributions for housing loans below N5 million and a maximum of 10% for loans from N5 million to N15 million.”
Some of the affordable real estate financing windows that Dangiwa listed include Estate Development Loans and the Cooperative Housing Development Loans both available at best market rates of 10% interest rates and the Off-taker Guarantee Scheme at 0.5% interest rate per annum.
He noted that within the last three years of the current management – April 2017 to date – has recorded major milestones.
According to him, increased public sensitization has led to a spike in registered contributors to the NHF scheme to 5,026,777.
“Increased NHF collections totalling N134 billion to bring the cumulative collections on NHF since inception 26 years ago to N366 billion.
“The three-year performance represents 36% of total collections in the 26-year life span of the scheme,” Dangiwa explained.
He said the bank has increased number of housing units by 7,740 while number of mortgage loans has also increased to 3,749. Home renovations for 39,458 beneficiaries
The MD solicited that state governments reduce title perfection fees, which currently range from 5% to 10% to the flat rate of 0.5% for mortgage affordability and expeditious treatment of consent to mortgage transactions by governors to improve turnaround time.
In his response, the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) and Executive Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi thanked the FMBN MD for his insightful presentation.
He noted that Dangiwa has made a convincing case for the collaboration and that the governors are keen to engage further with FMBN as a strategic affordable housing partner.
