SECONDARY MORTGAGE MARKET: A PANACEA FOR AFFORDABLE LONG TERM FINANCING FOR URBAN LOW INCOME HOUSING IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Finance, being an all-important factor; a sine qua non and very crucial ingredient to projects, no matter
their nature, is basically the fulcrum which sustains the lever for development projects. However, lack of
finance remains a major problem inhibiting the development of adequate and affordable housing in
Nigeria. In such a tight money market, housing is usually the first area to suffer, since neither the
developer nor the consumer can readily obtain finance for housing. Housing provision requires huge
capital outlay, which is often beyond the capacity of the medium income/low income groups. Olotuah
(2009) observes that the disparity between the price and quantity of housing on the one hand, and the
number of households and the money available to them to pay these prices on the other, constitute the
central problem of housing. There is no doubt that one of the foremost challenges of the Nigerian
housing economy today is that of developing an affordable mortgage financing system which befits a
dynamic, competitive and equitably economic system. This is because access to housing finance
constitutes one of the major pillars of sustainable private sector housing delivery system and is an
indicator of housing affordability. The key issue that emerges therefore revolves around how to ensure
adequate and sustainable long term lending by private financial institutions for low income households
rather than the current short term lending practice. This research therefore seeks to study the secondary
mortgage market as a panacea for achieving affordable long term financing for low income urban
housing especially in Nigeria.

Keywords: Secondary Mortgage Market, Panacea, Housing, Affordable, Finance, Low Income, Nigeria