Property Developer to Build 500 Houses in Dodoma

Government-owned property developer, Watumishi Housing Company (WHC), plans to build 500 houses for public servants in Dodoma, the political capital of Tanzania.

The announcement follows the decision of Tanzania’s President, John Magufuli, to move the Government’s headquarters to Dodoma over the next 5 years.

The announcement was recently made by Fred Msemwa, CEO of WHC, who explained that the WHC has already acquired 50 acres of land in the Njedengwa area in Dodoma.

He explained that the area is suitable for constructing 500 houses since it already has the necessary basic infrastructure (roads, water and electricity).

Msemwa indicated that the WHC will start with 100 houses in the fiscal year, 2016–2017. The price of the houses will be set between TZS35m and TZS65m.

The construction of these houses is part of the Tanzania Public Servants Housing Scheme (PSHS), which aims at building 50,000 housing units for Government workers in 5 phases.

At the end of 2015, WHC launched Phase I of the project. According to WHC, this is one of the major projects undertaken by Tanzania’s Government to ease the public servants’ housing shortage, with only 10,000 out of 650,000 workers provided with residential accommodation through mortgages or any other house purchase scheme. This is why WHC has signed cooperation agreements with CRDB Bank, Azania Bank, NMB, Bank of Africa, and Exim Bank.

Those will provide the government workers with mortgages which can be repaid in periods up to 25 years and at low rates between 11% and 13% per annum, compared to current mortgage rates of 16–19%.