The cost of housing has for long remained a sticking issue especially in the City of Kigali, which has the highest concentration of the working class. Many city dwellers, including those who are formally employed, find themselves out of the income bracket one needs to afford a decent house in the capital. While appearing this week before the Parliamentary Committee on Land, Agriculture, Livestock, and Environment, real estate developers attributed the high cost of housing to the cost of land and expensive borrowing from commercial banks. ALSO READ: How Government can stimulate Kigali’s affordable housing market Developers said that they access funding from commercial banks at an interest rate of between 16 and 18 per cent, which leaves them with no option but to off-load the burden on the prospective homeowners. First of all, it is important to commend the legislators for picking interest in this issue that affects many Rwandans, as the government continues to make efforts to ensure people move to planned settlements. ALSO READ: Meeting Kigali’s housing demand: What role can the private sector play? The situation is exacerbated by the continued pressure on land which inevitably drives up its cost. However, the good news is that all is not lost and the situation can be salvaged. To do this, there is need to take concrete measures to ensure commercial real estate developers and private homeowners optimize the land we have because it will only continue to shrink. Fortunately, the government in 2010 gazetted the condominium law, which allows multiple people to own housing units on a single complex. However, the uptake has also remained considerably low, which calls for further efforts to look into what could be the cause. While the Kigali city authorities made efforts by zoning different neighbourhoods to include high-density suburbs where such condominiums can be put up, people have not been forthcoming when it comes to buying such units for family use. There is therefore a need for continued education towards mindset change. The change in mindset however can also be accelerated by some incentives. For instance, the law in its current form only allows prospective homeowners from a condominium housing project to get a land title upon completion of the project. Ensuring people have their titles during early stages of a condominium housing project will mean that the buyers can use them to take loans which will therefore ease the burden on the developer, hence mitigating the cost and drive uptake. While this could have been done to protect buyers from unscrupulous developers, other measures can be considered to keep them in check, since this seems the surest way to unlock the conundrum.
