News: Govt Directs Mortgage Institutions to Process 66,400 Applications

The Federal Government has instructed primary mortgage institutions (PMIs) to process the applications of the over 66,000 Nigerians who applied for the 10,000 Nigerian Mortgage Refinancing Company (NMRC) housing programme.

Addressing journalists in Abuja yesterday, the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said "due to the over subscription (for the scheme) a decision has been taken to give all applicants to the lending members of NMRC to share on a pro-rata basis. Lending members of NMRC are expected to have the refinancing window of up to 20 years."

The initial offer of 10,000 mortgage application was over subscribed by 66,402 Nigerians who showed interest in the home ownership programme of the NMRC.

Okonjo-Iweala directed the 17 PMIs and four commercial banks involved in the mortgage exercise to share the 66,402 applications among themselves and prequalify those who meet the criteria for accessing mortgage facilities under the NMRC initiative and get back to the government in eight weeks.

According to her, President Goodluck Jonathan is monitoring the implementation process and assured both mortgage institutions and applicants that there is enough money to fund the 66,000 applications for now.

Applications for the 10,000 housing programme under the NMRC closed on the 5th of this month this year with 66,402 applications received from "exceedingly excited Nigerians with applications coming from the 36 states and the FCT".

She said 63 per cent of the applicants were male while 37 per cent were female. She said people "tend to apply individually as 89 per cent applied in their own names while only 11 per cent were joint applicants as couples."

Those in the 31-40 years age bracket submitted the highest number of applications suggesting interest among the actively working group of Nigerians.

Nigerians she said "showed that we prefer three bedroom flats/houses, with 62.7 per cent of applicants applying to acquire this property type. 32 per cent wanted two bed flats and a small percentage applied for one bedroom flats and one bedroom self-contained flats."

The programme she noted is for people who do not own a home, and from the information given by the applicants, "96 per cent of applicants are living in rented houses; most people (51 per cent) applied for buildings in Abuja with 18 per cent of applicants opting for Lagos. 92 per cent of the applicants have stable jobs while eight per cent are self employed."

Already, mortgage lenders have pre-qualified some people and asked them to look for their houses. She commended mortgage institutions for keeping to the time they said they will need to use to process applications which is eight weeks and also reducing the criteria for accessing the mortgage from 15 pages of information to just two pages.

The mortgage lenders are expected to sift through the applications and analyse and pre-qualify all applicants culminating in the amounts each lender is willing to advance to the applicant.

Source: The Nation