HOUSE PRICES CRITICISED

For the first time, the Mozambican government has publicly criticized the exorbitant prices of houses and flats on the Mozambican market.During a meeting between Mozambican and Portuguese contractors in Maputo on Monday, the Deputy Minister of Planning and Development, Maria Lucas, demanded that the prices of new housing should be within the reach of Mozambicans, and declared that she could not agree with the prices that are currently being charged by real estate companies.“We encourage the building of housing, but we don’t agree with the prices of apartments”, Lucas said. “The country is in a phase of development that does not allow prices like these to be charged”.She added that companies that build houses should improve their efficiency, in order to ensure that the final price of the houses is accessible.In the years immediately after independence, the state was the main supplier of rented housing. All rented housing had been nationalized (and most of the Portuguese settlers who claimed ownership of much urban housing had fled the country). But in the 1990s, tenants were allowed to buy their houses from the state very cheaply, and the amount of publicly owned housing shrank drastically. A private rented sector re-emerged, charging rents that most Mozambicans stood no change of paying.Almost no social housing was built – instead there was a vast expansion of luxury housing in urban centres, particularly Mozambique, which only those in the high income brackets could possibly afford.Even a modest two bedroom flat will now cost over 50,000 US dollars, and there are no cheap mortgage schemes that would allow the would-be buyer to pay this sum off in 20 years or more. Instead, the commercial banks charge their customers prohibitive interest rates.The result is that even urban dwellers who are reasonably well off in Mozambican terms opt to self-build their homes (sometimes in inappropriate places), bit by bit, buying building materials and hiring workers as and when they can, even if it takes them years to finish such houses.