SA Affordable Housing May - June 2019 // Issue: 76 | Page 31

ADVERTORIAL
Shared vision to make
housing more affordable
Property ownership is the vital foundation for socio-economic
transformation and – for it to happen in South Africa – it
will take strategic collaborations and a shared vision of all
affordable housing industry stakeholders.
By First National Bank
S
ocio-economic transformation through property
ownership can only happen if the challenges of
affordability, availability and the realisation of long-
term value are adequately addressed.
For FNB, achieving this objective requires affordable
housing solutions to adopt a much broader focus than just
the end user or occupier of low-cost homes. It also demands
that role players collaborate and innovate around property
developer finance structures to ensure greater access to
realistic home finance solutions for low income earners.
Government plays a significant role in this regard, not
only by providing free housing to very low-income earners
through its breaking new grounds (BNG) initiative, but in
also assisting with the rollout of FLISP (finance linked
individual subsidy programme). The FLISP initiative has a
budget allocation of R950-million over the next three years.
One of the biggest challenges in the housing market is
affordable housing supply, which results in a growing
number of people within the gap market (those who earn
between R3 501 to R22 000 gross monthly). The
contributing factors for this ranges from high building
material costs to the ever-rising land and infrastructure
costs. Therefore there is a need to start looking at
innovative solutions to curb this.
www.saaffordablehousing.co.za
FNB welcomes the land release programme as announced
by the Department of Human Settlements (DHS) in Gauteng
and the Western Cape. This will go a long way to drive the
cost of land down and make housing more affordable for
more people.
In addition, to help ease the process of homeownership,
FNB grants eBucks rewards of 50% of the value of the first
repayment (for customers using its digital platform, visit
nav» Home on the FNB Banking App to apply). This also
includes a 50% discount on attorney fees, preferential
interest rates and additional interest rate discounts for
customers who have their transactional accounts
with FNB.
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