The Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA) has stated that the industry is facing huge crises due to its unproductive nature.
The Association has attributed this to the low patronage as a result of the high costs of properties.
According to GREDA, though its members are expected to produce about 70, 000 houses, they only provide a little over a half of the figure.
Speaking to Citi Business News, the Executive Secretary of GREDA, Sammy Amegayibor said the government must engage with the private sector to identify ways to revamp the housing sector.
In his view, the inability of real estate developers to build to meet the rising demand of houses could push the housing deficit further to about 2 million housing units.
“We are reaching the crisis level now, it has worsened. As at 2010, that was when we were able to establish that we needed 1.7 million housing units and at that time there was around 3.4 million need of rooms” he lamented.
In order to confront that, we needed to do about 70,000 yearly but we are doing under 70,000 , we are doing around 35, 000 to 45, 000 and it tells you that between 2010 and now we have been able to produce only at half capacity meaning that we have added on to the deficit from 2010 so that is why I am saying we are projecting over 2 million,” he added.
He spoke to Citi Business News at the sidelines of the Canada-Ghana Chamber of Commerce Real Estate Forum on the theme “affordable housing by private developers.”
Government scraps 5% real estate taxes
The renewed appeal by the real estate industry comes at a time that government has removed the 5% VAT on real estate.
The tax, which was implemented during the erstwhile NDC administration had been cited as the bane of the housing sector.
It is expected that the move together with other economic conditions will bring down the cost of properties and facilitate purchases.
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