Be prepared to complete the contract – Holness

Prime Minister Andrew Holness says real estate developers who enter into a contractual agreement under the National Housing Trust Guaranteed Purchase Programme should prepare to deliver affordable housing solutions for contributors or face strict penalties through the courts.

Holness, who has ministerial responsibility for the NHT, says the GPP is a very good initiative and has urged more serious and capable housing developers to come on board despite some level of risk.

“It won’t be a situation where contractors can feel that because it’s government, they don’t have to perform. Or they may believe they know somebody, and therefore the NHT won’t take them to court. That’s not the case. So I wanted to be very clear with these programmes that if you decide to sign up, be prepared to complete the contract as it is contracted,” Holness warned.

“Of course, there are risks – there are challenges because sometimes developers come on board and say yes, we can build, sign on to an agreement and then change their mind afterwards and don’t want to fulfil the agreement. And that we can’t have so I’m saying it here clearly that the NHT will maintain a very strict posture in these agreements,” warned Holness.

“And we will carry all our contracts to court to be adjudicated if the contractors do not perform, and that should be absolutely clear,” he insisted while delivering the keynote address at a ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of 60 housing solutions in the Sheffield Palms, a housing development in Westmoreland, on Friday.

The 60 two-bedroom units fall under the NHT’s Guaranteed Purchase Programme and are part of an overall development consisting of 113 housing solutions being brought to market by the Sheffield Palms Development

The Guaranteed Purchase Programme (GPP) is a partnership initiative between the National Housing Trust (NHT) and developers, through which the NHT agrees to purchase for its contributors all or portions of units in housing developments done by private or public real estate developers.

Under the arrangement, the developer accepts all the risks associated with the planning, designing, financing, and completing of the housing solutions, while the NHT undertakes the marketing risk in respect of the agreed number of solutions.