March
The Housing Authority Board has approved an amendment to its Consent to Dealings Procedure.
This applies to customers who have purchased land and have not built a new home on the property.
Housing Authority chief executive officer Alipate Naiorosui said, “We are providing tangible incentives to encourage land only customers to build a new home through the GOLD PACKAGE home loan which enables low income families who earn $16,500 or less per annum to access an affordable home loan package”.
As well, these customers who build a home will be able to claim 100 percent VAT refund if they build a house to live in up to the value of $120,000.
Naiorosui continued, “Once people purchase a lot, they agree to build a house within 2 years. The new amendments encourage land owning customers to utilize the incentives to build or be penalized for reselling the lot”.
The amendments to consent of dealings procedures which are effective immediately will impact land owning customers if they have not built within the 2 years of purchase and wish to sell the lot.
Housing Authority will now only grant consent to sale of a lot under the following conditions;
(i) A fixed penalty of $3,000 or 10% of the sale price whichever is greater for residential leases and $5,000 or 10% of the sale price whichever is greater for Commercial/Industrial leases to be paid to the Authority. Such amount to be paid to the Authority prior to the endorsement of the Authority’s consent on the Transfer document.
The aforesaid penalty fees would not be applicable to transfer of vacant land where lessees are transferring said lots to their next of kin or a transfer is effected by way of administration of an estate and not by way of sale.
(ii) The incoming lessee for residential leases only shall be a first home buyer, ie, the incoming lessee should not own any other property.
(iii) The incoming lessee should provide a written commitment to build a dwelling within 2 years from the date of registration of the proposed transfer and provide the building plans and evidence of finance for the construction to the satisfaction of the Authority.
Going forward Housing Authority will be closely monitoring its land owning customers to encourage the building of homes and to ensure that they are not in breach of the lease conditions.