17 Aug 2015

The initiative by Botswana Housing Corporation (BHC) to have tenants buy houses they rent is said to be slow in Mahalapye as compared to towns such as Selibe Phikwe.

In an interview recently the deputy chief executive officer of BHC, Mr Nkaelang Matenge said only two houses were purchased by tenants in Mahalapye from April to June this year.

Mr Matenge said that could be because there were few long serving tenants in Mahalapye, and that most of their houses were rented by institutions rather than individuals.

He said they decided to come to Mahalapye to sensitise their tenants about the sitting tenant campaign initiative which encourages tenants to buy their rented houses. He said they also invited financial institutions and furniture shops to inform tenants how they could get financing to buy their houses as well as to buy furniture for the houses.

He further said they intend to build more houses in Mahalapye in 2017. The sitting tenant campaign, he said, was in line with the government’s desire to encourage home ownership among Batswana.

He said through the campaign a person who buys a house they were renting was given a P7 500 voucher to renovate the house, and that they get various discounts according to the size of the house.

A low cost house buyer gets 5.5 per cent discount, a medium cost buyer gets 3.5 per cent discount whereas a high cost house buyer gets 2 per cent discount.

Furthermore, he said there were no administration costs when buying the house. Mr Matenge said the challenge which tenants encounter when they want to buy their rented property was that banks required tenants to raise a deposit of 10 to 30 per cent of the cost of the house.

He noted that banks cover the rest, but that many tenants could not afford to raise the amount, and that they end up resorting to renting. The other challenge, he said, was that the cost of constructing new houses which was expensive coupled with the fact that BHC was allocated unserviced land to build houses.

He noted that they service the land at a cost, adding that the cost of servicing land was usually 30 per cent of the construction cost, and that the cost of servicing the land was passed to the house buyer.

He noted that BHC does not receive any money from the government, and that  selling houses for less than they constructed them would cripple their operations.

To mitigate challenges tenants face, he said BHC encourages families to buy their rented house by contributing together as a family. Furthermore, he said BHC would return the rent-to-purchase scheme this financial year in areas they find difficult to purchase housing.

Another initiative which BHC has adopted to make housing cheaper, he said, was using alternative technology to build houses. ENDS