Daniel Ohene Aidoo
CITIES AND Habitats, developers of the Planned Cities Extension Project, and Ecobank Ghana Plc. have launched a new home ownership scheme called the Rent-To-Own Boafoɔ Home Ownership Package.
The package was carefully designed to actualise the theme for year’s World Habitat Day celebrations, which is “Mind the Gap. Leave No One and Place Behind”.
Besides, the theme sits perfectly well with Cities and Habitats’ Rent-to-Own housing scheme, which seeks to help channel resources and energies to reduce Ghana’s housing deficit and shape Ghana’s urban future.
The Rent-To-Own Boafoɔ Home Ownership Package is a payment method planned to ease the financial burden of home seekers by affording them early occupancy of the property within eighteen (18) months from the payment of the initial deposit.
Project Manager for Cities and Habitats, Daniel Ohene Aidoo, introducing the package, said it has always been the desire of the project to find sound and workable solutions to ensure that home ownership is made easy for all.
The Rent-To-Own Boafoɔ Home Ownership Package, according to him, seeks to help home seekers to fast-track access to their homes with the help of the bank by raising the 20 per cent required under the scheme before they are given occupancy.
The other key benefit under this package is that Cities and Habitats is giving 15 per cent discount on the required 20 per cent initial deposit to all home seekers who wish to be supported by Ecobank for any type of house listed under the package.
The minimum amount that clients are expected to pay as ‘monthly rent’ is about GHC1,250 for a one-bedroom apartment expandable to three bedrooms.
The properties under this package will be located within the Planned Cities Extension enclaves around the country. The first one is at Prampram in Accra, where several properties are already at different stages of completion, and about 50 are almost ready to be delivered to owners this year.
Edward Botchway, Executive Director – Consumer Banking, Ecobank Ghana and Regional Head of Consumer Banking for Anglophone West Africa (AWA), indicated that the Rent-To-Own Boafoɔ Home Ownership Package by Cities and Habitats is a great initiative, which will make many people who hitherto could not afford their own homes do so.