By YINKA KOLAWOLE

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, said home ownership through mortgage was the only effective way to bridge housing deficit in the country. Fashola spoke at the inauguration of Chois Estate, a housing estate in Lekki area of the state.

The 420-unit estate of bungalows and duplexes was delivered by the state government in partnership with a property development company, First Communities Limited.

The governor said that the major barrier to home ownership was affordability, saying it would extremely be difficult for people to own homes if they were asked to pay outright for it. He said the state government was building homes and allocating them on mortgage to residents, to ensure convenient home ownership.

“Mortgages remain the only way to reduce housing deficit and ensure convenient home ownership. That is how it is done all over the world. That is what we are doing with our homes. We allocate them to our people and ask them to pay the equity contributions and spread the remaining payments over a minimum of 10 years,” he asserted.

Fashola said the delivery of the estate was in fulfilment of his electoral promise to deliver democratic dividends to residents of the state. He said a similar estate had been delivered in Agbowa area of the state and10, 000 homes would be delivered at the conclusion of the project phase under the government’s partnership with First Communities.

Also speaking at the occasion, Mr Bosun Jeje, Lagos State Commissioner for Housing, said the government was irrevocably committed to delivery of quality housing. He said a number of projects were on-going and their eventual delivery would reduce the housing deficit in the state.