The National Housing Trust (NHT) remains confident that the apartments at Ruthven Towers in New Kingston will be sold quickly.

The Government agency recently went on the defensive for the units following backlash for its revised pricing strategy. The units, which were initially proposed to sell for between $16 and $22 million in 2018, now range from $27 -million to $37- million dollars. 

Senior General Manager for Construction and Development at the National Housing Trust (NHT), Donald Moore told Kalilah Reynolds on Taking Stock that its contributor data indicates that there’s still demand for the apartments.

He said the NHT should be issuing a report on take up in short order with intake for the apartments closing only on Monday.

According to the Senior Manager, several changes were made in the finishings of the units, to satisfy concerns in the market. That he reasoned should reduce potential challenges in selling them.

“Normally we do some work to look and throw out some things that were not completed properly and then we’ll be able to tell you just how many of those persons are now qualified to be able to be part of the next phase,” he said pointing out that a lot of people have been wanting to take up residency at the property. 

When pressed about who would be able to afford to live in the apartment, Moore argued that several people are in fact eligible and currently residing at family homes with the desire to be on their own.

In justifying the price of the units, he noted that several considerations would have to be factored in, including the land as well as construction and finishing costs.

He said the team would have also looked at other development costs, including how much it would take to install recreational facilities, spanning a pool, game room, jogging track and tennis court.

Senior General Manager for Construction and Development at the National Housing Trust (NHT), Donald Moore

“It’s a combination of development costs and the cost to NWC, JPS for connections to their infrastructure,” he said, pointing out also that the property comes with significant underground parking. He said while that space was not built directly under the building, persons can access the building from the underground parking without coming on ground. 

Moore said the decision was made to install high level finishings, compared to other previous projects in the price range, to ensure that the property would not again become a construction site once persons moved in. He said while new owners will be able to make improvements, the aim was for those improvements to be minor.

“We Went out and did market testing and the market was saying that if you’re to put the pricing at a particular point and that price came with a certain quality of materials you’re going to have a dump because we’re going to turn it into a construction site and so what you’d find is that ppl would buy into a building an overtime, and we see it in regular housing schemes, and they’d start construction immediately,” he said.

“They can do improvements that make sense. We put in porcelain tiles for example so that you can’t come in with your jackhammer to dig out tiles to put in porcelain and so on so those are the kind of decisions that we made,” he added.

Responding to criticisms over the NHT’s mandate, Moore said the entity continues to work to increase Jamaica’s housing stock with a focus on low income. However he added that their mandate has been to provide products and services to all its contributors, the vast majority being persons in the higher income brackets.

He said in the last 20 years, the NHT has only undertaken three development projects that fit into the Ruthven Towers price range. The other two are Salisbury in St. James and Paddington in Kingston.

He argued that less than one percent of the projects underway are targeting higher income employees. He said some 30 projects are now under construction focusing on those in the lower income brackets. Those projects range from as low as $4.5 million for a unit in Estuary St. James to $13 million in Silver Sun Estates over in St. Catherine.

He added that the NHT also continues to sell service lots ranging from $2.5 and $4 million.

“We are converting it [the land] into value”, he said also noting that the NHT has not been competing with the open market because everyone has been co-existing in the business of trying to house Jamaicans.

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