OpEd: Affordable housing requires a new shape for the mortgage industry
By Johnstone Oltetia, Interim CEO Kenya Mortgage Refinance Company (KMRC)
There are two essential parts to achieving affordable housing: building decent, low-cost homes, and developing a housing finance market that enables low-income earners to buy those homes. For, without finance, almost no home price is low enough to be affordable on an average salary.
For this reason, the mortgage market has been growing. Housing loans have risen more than ten-fold since 2006, from 1,278 loans valued at Sh19m 12 years ago to 24,458 loans valued at Sh203.3bn by 2015, according to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).
But the market still remains tiny when compared with other nations. In Tanzania and Uganda, the mortgage loan value is under 2.5 per cent GDP while in Kenya stands at 3.15 per cent of GDP by 201...