President John Dramani Mahama has proposed a financing scheme to help owners of unfinished houses raise the money needed to complete their properties and move into them.
He said the National Housing Fund (NHF), in partnership with financial institutions, should develop a product under which owners of unfinished houses would receive financing to complete the structures and repay the loans after moving into their homes.
The President made the proposal at the maiden National Conference on Housing Finance on Wednesday, October 7, 2026, in Accra. He said the scheme could unlock the money already invested in thousands of unfinished houses while reducing the burden on people who continued to pay rent despite owning properties under construction.
"I travel all over the country, and anytime we are coming to land, and you see the number of unfinished houses all over. It is mind-boggling," President Mahama said.
He said the proposed scheme should begin with the identification of unfinished houses in selected areas, after which engineers and architects would prepare bills of quantities to determine the additional funding required to complete them. The incomes and financial circumstances of the owners would also be assessed to determine their ability to repay the loans.
"Can't we get a product that allows us to take an area, identify all the uncompleted houses there, get engineers and architects to do the bill of quantities? Let's see how much more it would take to complete them," he said.
President Mahama said some of the houses were already at the roofing stage and could be completed with additional financial support. He also proposed linking the completed houses to rent-to-own arrangements, under which owners would move into their properties and use the money they would otherwise have paid as rent to repay the financing.
"I mean, we must think outside the box when it comes to these things," the President said.
Unfinished houses
The proposal comes against the backdrop of a large number of unfinished structures across the country. The 2021 Population and Housing Census counted 1,065,387 structures that were completely roofed but not completed, while another 825,367 structures were incomplete and without roofing. The census figures cover structures generally and did not establish how many are privately owned residential houses whose owners are paying rent elsewhere.
The census also found that 65.8 per cent of not-fully-completed structures with some form of roofing were being used for residential purposes. The proportion rose to 71.3 per cent in urban areas.
The Minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Mr Mahama Ayariga, who also spoke at the conference, described money invested in unfinished houses as "dead capital". He said many people had invested substantial amounts in construction but continued to live in rented accommodation because their houses remained incomplete.
He said the country needed to make better use of the money already invested in unfinished houses while improving the planning of housing delivery. He noted that many cities were expanding horizontally, with people putting up buildings in areas that were not adequately serviced, which increased the eventual cost of providing water, electricity, roads and other services. He said Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies should consider more vertical development and better planning to improve the coordination of infrastructure and housing delivery.
Housing finance
The President's proposal formed part of calls at the conference for housing finance products that reflected the circumstances of ordinary Ghanaians, particularly those outside formal employment.
The Deputy Minister for Works, Housing and Water Resources, Ms Gizella Tetteh-Agbotui, said Ghana's housing problem was not only a shortage of houses but also a shortage of financing. She called for longer-term mortgages for formal-sector workers, housing microfinance products for informal-sector workers, staged construction finance for households building incrementally, as well as rent-to-own and shared-equity models for young and first-time homeowners.
She said developers also faced high land and infrastructure costs, expensive construction materials, limited access to long-term construction finance and challenges associated with land administration, all of which increased the cost of housing.
The National Housing Fund resumed lending under the National Mortgage Scheme last month at an interest rate of 8.4 per cent, down from 13.5 per cent, while developer financing under the scheme stands at 10.4 per cent.
The Chairman of the National Housing Fund Board, Okoamankra Kwame Akwonu X, said the Fund had also piloted the Rent-to-Own Scheme and was seeking to increase investment in its housing finance programmes to accommodate more applicants.
President Mahama said existing mortgage schemes must be expanded but cautioned that conventional mortgages alone could not solve the country's housing problem. He said traders, artisans, farmers, transport operators and other self-employed workers must also be brought into the housing finance system. He proposed alternative methods of assessing their ability to repay loans, including their savings history and verifiable business cash flows.
