Mortgage situation in South Africa pathetic

More than 80 percent of the nearly 14 million households in South Africa do not earn enough to qualify for bank housing loans, according to the South African Institute for Race Relations.

Only 1.6million households earned enough to qualify unassisted for a bank mortgage.

Some 60 percent of the households earned R3 500 or less, a month in 2009.

Only 7 percent earned between R7 000 and R10 500- enough to disqualify them from government housing programmes, but not enough to get a bank mortgage.

But the government has admitted that it cannot accommodate all those in need of housing.

According to information in our book, South Africa rolled out1.5 million housing units in the first 15 years of independence accommodating nearly 11 million people, but at the same time the housing backlog rose from 1.5 million to 2.1 million which meant that the government needed to accommodate a further 12 million people.

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