An Examination of Private Real Estate Developers’ Perspectives on Effectiveness of Government Support to the Ghanaian Housing Industry

Abstract

The centric role of housing in socio-economic development of nations makes many governments across the world play significant direct or indirect role in improving the housing industries for national development. Nonetheless, some governments, particularly in developing countries, have reduced their support for the housing industry to the creation of an enabling environment as a result of advised from World Bank. This appears to be failing due to economic challenges. Consequently, the entire Ghanaian housing sector has been left to private developers, who have very limited capacity to address the country's rising housing deficit, among other challenges. The purpose of this study is to make suggestions to the government to consciously improve its assistance to private real estate developers to help them in overcoming the challenges they face in the housing industry. The study was quantitative and made use of a survey questionnaire that was designed after reviewing relevant literature. Fifty-two (52) registered members of Ghana Real Estate Developers with offices were purposively sampled, and the data collected was analysed by SPSS v20 using descriptive statistics: cross-tabulations (correlation matrix) and frequencies. The findings revealed that the government's support to private real estate developers in housing development was inadequate. As a result of the affordability issues, private developers are discouraged from investing in housing for low to middle income households. Therefore, the study concluded that government commitment to the housing industry is critical, including streamlining the land tenure system, establishing land banking, assisting in the provision of infrastructure development, and assisting them in mortgage financing schemes.