A global investment firm, with massive expertise in asset backed mortgage securities, is set to inject $1 billion (about N200 billion) in the Nigerian mortgage sector.
The firm has also unveiled plans to build 10,000 houses in Kaduna, Lagos, Enugu and Abuja, within the next one year.
Managing Director of the firm’s Debt Capital Markets division, Jack Heffernan, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), with Charles Inyangette, CEO of the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) at a ceremony presided over by the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in Abuja recently.
According to the minister, the entry of such an important player into Nigeria’s mortgage sector is yet another indication that the President Goodluck Jonathan administration’s vision of making affordable housing available to Nigerians is attracting investors’ confidence.
Okonjo-Iweala said: ”President Jonathan saw the setting up of NMRC as a major component to transform and diversify this economy. It has the twin objectives of ensuring that Nigerians, especially young people, have their own homes in this country, as well as creating jobs.”
“In other climes, the housing sector has been the engine of their economies and makes the construction industry to be vibrant. It creates jobs, and at the same time, drives other sectors of the economy.
“You can imagine that you stimulate the housing sector; you are touching other sectors because you are making it possible for bricklayers and other people to work, like painters, even interior decorators who are going to work there. It has a multiplier effect on the economy. You know we have gone out on this programme and advertised 10,000 housing units and 66,000 people applied. Of the 66,000, 25,000 have been prequalified, 9,000 of them have actually received offer letters, 33 of them have found houses”.
She added that the prospects of achieving the core vision of the NMRC, which is to get young Nigerians convenient access to the means of owning their own homes has been achieved to a reasonable extent.