There is a picture of Ghana's real estate industry that we have all come to accept without questioning.
Open any property website, drive through any new housing estate, attend any housing fair — the story is the same: East Legon, Cantonments, Airport Residential, Trasacco, Tema Community 25, Kasoa, Prampram, Takoradi.
The map of Ghana's modern housing ends somewhere around Kumasi and Cape Coast.
Beyond that, it is as if Ghanaians stop needing decent homes.
That is why the call by the Deputy Minister of Works, Housing and Water Resources, Gizella Tetteh-Agbotui, for more investments in other parts of the country at the media launch of the Graphic-GREDA Housing Fair 2026 deserves serious attention beyond the usual news cycle.
She said what many have refused to say: "Ghanaians in the Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Savannah, Bono, Ahafo and other regions equally deserve access to quality housing and modern real estate developments."
It is a simple statement, but it challenges a dangerous and entrenched business model that is deepening regional inequality.
For decades, real estate developers have concentrated their activities in the south, particularly in Greater Accra, for understandable reasons.
Accra is where the effective demand is, where mortgage finance is domiciled, where expatriates and the middle class cluster, where land, though expensive, has clearer title systems, and where returns on investment are faster.
But that concentration has created its own crisis.
It has fuelled Accra's chaotic sprawl, inflated land prices beyond the reach of ordinary workers, and contributed to the paradox we live with today — a housing deficit officially put at 1.8 million units, co-existing with 2.1 million uncompleted houses and 1.27 million completed but unoccupied houses, according to the 2021 Population and Housing Census.
The sad reality is, many properties remain vacant because they are priced beyond the reach of the very people they were meant for.
We are building for speculation, not for habitation.
If we are serious about fixing this, we must deliberately decentralise housing investment.
And there are compelling economic reasons to do so.
Land economics favour it. Land in Tamale, Bolgatanga, Wa, Damongo, Sunyani and Goaso is relatively cheaper and more available than in Accra.
That alone can significantly reduce the final cost of a house by 30 to 40 per cent, making mortgages more affordable.
The Daily Graphic supports the Deputy Minister’s call to developers to undertake market research in these underserved regions.
The markets exist.
There are teachers, nurses, civil servants, military officers, business owners and diasporans in the north who want decent, titled, well-planned homes and are tired of the incremental, 10-year self-build that drains resources and produces structurally weak buildings.
This idea also aligns with the government's own spatial development agenda.
How do we convince young people to stay and work in the six newly created regions if the housing options available to them are substandard compared to what Accra offers?
Quality housing is part of regional competitiveness.
But for this to happen, two things must change. One is the mindset of developers.
As the President of the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA), Dr James Ato Orleans-Lindsay noted, reducing the housing deficit would require greater reliance on locally produced building materials and innovative technologies — bricks, pozzolana cement, bamboo.
Local bricks thrive in savannah climates; bamboo thrives in forest zones. Building with them reduces cost and carbon footprint.
If the government provides targeted tax incentives for locally manufactured materials, the business case for building in Wa or Nalerigu becomes even stronger.
The second is financing. Access to finance remains the binding constraint.
Mortgage rates have hovered around 30 per cent for years, making homeownership a fantasy.
We must have deliberate access to finance to cover properties outside Accra, with flexible underwriting that recognises the income patterns of workers in other regions.
The upcoming Graphic-GREDA Housing Fair, scheduled for December 3-5 this year and organised by Graphic Communications Group Ltd, GREDA and Media General, could not be timelier.
Its focus on high construction costs, limited long-term financing and fraudulent transactions hits at the three cancers of the country’s housing sector.
Our expectation is that when the fair opens in December, we should not see only estates in Accra and Tema.
We should see master plans for Tamale, Bolgatanga, Wa, Techiman and Sunyani.
We should see mortgage products that a nurse in the Savannah Region can access.
We should see a map of Ghana that is fully housed, not half-housed.
Housing is not a southern privilege. It is a national right.
