Cantor Fitzgerald, a global investment firm with strong expertise in asset backed mortgage securities is investing $1 billion (about N200 billion) in the Nigerian mortgage sector.
The firm has also made arrangements to build 10,000 houses in Kaduna, Lagos, Enugu and Abuja, within the next one year.
Jack Heffernan, managing director of the firm’s Debt Capital Markets division, signed an MOU with Charles Inyangette, CEO of the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) in a ceremony presided over by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala ,the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, earlier on Tuesday in Abuja.
Okonjo-Iweala explained that the entry of such an important player into Nigeria’s mortgage sector is yet another signal that the Jonathan administration’s vision of making affordable housing available to Nigerians is earning the confidence of serious international investors.
She said,”President Jonathan saw the setting up of NMRC as a major component to transform and diversify this economy. It has the twin objectives of ensuring that Nigerians, especially young people, have their own homes in this country, as well as creating jobs.
READ ALSO: Lessons from the United States of America
“In other climes, the housing sector has been the engine of their economies and makes the construction industry to be vibrant. It creates jobs, and at the same time, drives other sectors of the economy.
“You can imagine that you stimulate the housing sector; you are touching other sectors because you are making it possible for bricklayers and other people to work, like painters, even interior decorators who are going to work there. It has a multiplier effect on the economy
“You know we have gone out on this programme and advertised 10,000 housing units and 66,000 people applied. Of the 66,000, 25,000 have been prequalified, 9,000 of them have actually received offer letters, 33 of them have found houses”.
She further observed, “We are also working on a number of initiatives to ensure that our people take up mortgage offers, irrespective of your income.
“We are working with PENCOM so that workers can borrow from their retirement savings to get houses, because when they get offer letters ,they don’t have money to pay.
“We are also looking at other ways to collaborate with CBN and other agencies. We are looking at cost of construction”.
She said the prospects of achieving the core vision of the NMRC, which is to get young Nigerians convenient access to the means of owning their own homes was being achieved.
“Cantor Fitzgerald’s presence in Nigeria shows that our mortgage strategy is attracting the right kind of attention from the right kind of people around the world and this will deepen and diversify and ultimately reduce the cost of mortgage and housing in Nigeria”.
The NMRC in Nigeria has been set up by the Federal Government as a vehicle to bridge the funding cost of residential mortgages and promote the availability and affordability of good housing to working Nigerians by providing mortgage lending banks with increased access to liquidity and longer term funds in the mortgage market.
Hefernan described the NMRC as “exactly the right business model to bring liquidity to Nigeria’s housing sector”.
Harrison Edeh
