By Eric Appah Marfo, GNA
Accra, July 27, GNA — Alpha Mead Facilities, Ghana (AMF), a Facilities Management Company, on Tuesday, launched “Rent4Less”, a product-service initiative in Accra to support Government’s initiative to help Ghanaians meet their shelter needs.
The product is meant to transform the housing and office rental market in Ghana through an innovative system of flexible rent payment.
Reverend Kennedy Okosun, Chairman, Board of Directors for AMF, Ghana, said the product would drive a new culture of rent payment for Ghanaians and unlock the economic engines of real estate assets for developers, landlords, and investors whose properties had been idle for too long.
He said “Rent4Less” would allow citizens to pick and choose secure accommodation based on their location preference, community types, growing lifestyle needs, investment appetite and even earning capacity.
Rev Okosun said if people earned wages monthly and attended to their other basic needs such as clothing and food periodically, it would not be helpful that tenants paid rent annually.
He said monies locked with landlords for 12 to 24 months could be invested in other ventures that would be of benefit to the investor, the businesses where they were invested, and by extension, the economy, and that with “Rent4Less”, Ghanaians could pay rent monthly, quarterly or bi-annually.
The Chairman said despite the immense impact of shelter on the social architecture, not everyone in Ghana, and indeed a significant part of Africa was able to afford a safe, comfortable, and secure accommodation.
That, he said was not because developers had stopped building, adding that, a drive around some of the cities revealed an interesting paradox of scarcity amid plenty, with low occupancy rates on the one side and unmet demands for housing on the other.
“However, the answers are not far-fetched. It is the difference between willingness to pay and ability to pay. Many Ghanaians want to live in these apartments, they want to avoid the stress of commuting two to five hours between where they live and where they work.”
“Unfortunately, the current rent pattern in our nation, which requires a tenant to pay between six- and twenty-four-months advance rent creates a huge gap between our people’s wish to live in comfortable environments and the size of their pockets,” he said.
He commended Government for the effort to bridge the gap in the area of rent availability and affordability.
“From different rent-to-own schemes to improved legislation, our government continues to demonstrate its commitment to affordable living conditions for all,” he added.
He said because real estate was a location-driven investment asset class, it posed a difficulty for an average income earner to stay in prime locations close to Central Business Districts (CBDs), primarily because of the rent structure in those locations.
The Chairman said, therefore, “Rent4Less” would address that problem with its shared living or working system that allowed people of like minds to share the same living or working space and pay for just what they used monthly.
In effect, “Rent4Less” would not only focus on the rent payment cycle but also, space utilisation.
Rev Okosun said under the Guaranteed Rental Income Programme (GRIP), the product would ensure that landlords enjoyed early economic benefit on their assets, increase occupancy levels, and leverage Alpha Mead’s expertise in Facilities Management to ensure that the assets remained in valuable condition.
“As we scale up the number of office buildings and apartments across the country, we envisage a huge demand for different facilities and property management skills. Our strategy is to leverage on the synergy of strengths in the Alpha Mead Group to bridge the skill gaps; working with the training arm of our business to prepare our people for the opportunities that are coming.”
“This product, Rent4Less is very dear to our heart and a further expression of our company’s essence ‘We Care’. We see unique, limitless potential and impact for this product in our nation…,” he said.
GNA
