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However, Femi Johnson, MD/ CEO, Homebase Mortgage, explained in an interview that it took the company this long to return to the capital market because the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires it to have expended about 70 percent of the earlier capital before returning to raise more capital.

High interest rate has been the bane of mortgage access for home ownership in Nigeria as many mortgage applicants and home seekers cannot afford the commercial interest rate of between 20 percent and 25 percent charged on mortgage loans with very short repayment period.

The role NMRC is expected to play in this direction is to provide liquidity for the mortgage market and, consistent with its mandate to promote wider spread of home ownership, accessibility and affordability, the company has come with some initiatives that have also failed to show impact.

The ‘Housing/mortgage Market Information Portal (MMIP)’ is one of such initiatives aimed to enable it to gather data for intelligence and profiling of federal, states civil servants and informal sectors (off-takers) for affordable housing.

Another initiative is the Mortgage Market System ( MMS) which is a transformational change that integrates the entire housing market, covering construction finance, primary and secondary mortgage. The system which is available to all players in the housing industry has the benefit of removing duplications of effort in gathering data and documents; improving the turnaround time, reducing the cycle time of transactions and helping in making homes more affordable.

But, affordable housing is made possible more by affordable mortgage which is not available at the moment . And Okon wants to know how long he has wait to see and access affordable mortgage.