A R14,6 million Finance Linked Individual Subsidy Programme (FLISP) has been launched by Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale fulfilling one of President Jacob Zuma’s priorities announced in the State of the Nation Address.
FLISP was developed by the Department of Human Settlements to help people in the R3 501 and R15 000 income band acquire houses.
“This programme enables qualifying beneficiaries to reduce the initial mortgage loan amount or augment the shortfall between the qualifying loan and the total house price,” explained Sexwale.
The programme is run by the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC), a human settlements institution, which is the implementing agent and is in partnerships with commercial banks.
“The kind of relationship we have established with the banks is such that we give the process a 7-day turn-around from the time of application. We are expanding the home-ownership market and we believe this is the future towards ensuring a sustainable human settlements,” said Samsom Moraba the CEO of NHFC.
The Walmer-Link project consisting of 430 units and is the first of its kind to be launched nationally. The Department, working together with NHFC and provinces, will roll-out more of these projects nationwide.
“These are going to be based on demand rather than just building and hoping people will come through. The bigger the demand the more we build. We are also aware that most households are heavily indebted and our job is to help where we can, without putting further burden on both the banks and individual beneficiaries,” said Moraba.
MEC for Human Settlements, Safety and Liaison in the Eastern Cape, Ms Helen Sauls-August said she was beaming with pride to be able to pilot such a project and assured that more of such were to be rolled-out in the province.
“This programme is what our people have been waiting for. Not everyone is waiting for a government-subsidized house, people want to have homes but have not been able to because they earn too little for a mortgage bond. Now government has enabled home ownership through FLISP,” she said.
Leave a Comment