BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, June 15. 2018 – MINISTER of Home Settlement, Hon. Eugene Hamilton is encouraging new homeowners to honour the financial obligation that has been placed on them and ensure their monthly mortgage is paid.
He made this urge several times this week, at the National Housing Corporation (NHC) handing over ceremonies for the newly constructed homes in Halfway Tree, Sandy Point and Saddlers.
Hamilton, in an interview with SKNVibes, explained that in the past there were homeowners who did not make their regular payments and as such, other families are missing out on the opportunity to own their homes through NHC.
Historically, some persons have failed to live up to their financial commitments and you might find that as a result of that NHC might have an unusually high amount of arrears. That, of course, could be due to circumstances that caused them to miss a payment and they were not encouraged or disciplined enough to make up the payments.
He stated that NHC does not take punitive measures such as taking legal action against a person who does not pay their mortgage and as a result, people continuously fail to keep up with their monthly payments.
“I would think that for an institution like NHC, we have a higher percentage of arrears than a normal financial institution so that is why I want to encourage people. When you encourage people to do that, it means we can pay our loans and have monies to build for other people.
“Let us say that NHC has arrears of $4 000 000, that is four million dollars that can go into homes. Four million dollars can give us maybe another 20 to 25 homes. It means that if we are in arrears for four million dollars, 25 people are being deprived of having their own home,” Hamilton explained.
Hamilton explained that the Unity government took the decision to reduce the interest rate attached to the payment on the homes from where it was as low as two percent because they wanted to keep the mortgage payments as low as possible to allow for flexibility of the homeowners.
He stated that if they kept the pre-existing mortgage, homeowners would have to pay over $1000 per month.
