Housing and You…The banks and that Letter of Assurance

Apr 06, 2014 News

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By Leonard Gildarie

This week I received two emails from readers. One from overseas asked how to apply for a remigrant house lot. The other had to do with the timely processing of transports.
With regards to the remigrant scheme on the East Bank of Demerara, the Minister of Housing, Irfaan Ali, says that a few lots are remaining. Persons living abroad can go online at the Ministry of Housing and apply. The Ministry would reply. If they are in Guyana, checks can also be made with the Ministry. The lots are available for persons who are residing overseas and want to come here. Of course, there are conditions.

According to one reader from Berbice, he has been experiencing problems with his transport. He paid for it and has been waiting nine months. As long as you have been allocated a house lot by the Ministry and have paid for it, the processing of the transport would start.
Now, I can speak with some authority when I say that in the past, the lending institutions have been accepting what is called a Letter of Assurance. This is a letter from the Ministry stating that the transport is being processed and will be forwarded to the lending agency when it is ready for pickup.
Those agencies have been using this in the past to process the mortgage.
The writer is saying that one major bank is refusing to issue the mortgage because of the absence of the transport.
According to the Minister, they have received no complaints from allottees that there is a situation. However, I rather suspect that maybe the department processing the transports is facing problems. Next week we will talk to them on the situation and discuss it in detail. In the meantime, the Ministry wants to know about these instances.
I have also been receiving complaints about the state of the new housing schemes.
I have had bruising encounters with the Ministry on issues of security, cows, mixing cement on the roadways, garbage and the unoccupied house lots.
The reality is that housing development, because of demands, is a hugely challenging one for the administration. The available lands were mainly not privately owned. It had to be developed. Many allottees work elsewhere with no real jobs created in schemes.
It is a fact that the lots were issued and persons started building, and moving in without much of the infrastructure in place. Diamond was a classical example.
Now things are changing rapidly, with more monies for capital works being available.
The point is that many schemes will have those things that get citizens angry. Things like crime and those huge craters or somebody dumping sand on the roadway and totally blocking passage.
In July 2011, we had discussed how to best adjust to your new home and community after moving in. It is an issue that can’t really be given justice in one column.
However, we will republish parts of that article. I hope it helps.
Millions of dollars are lost daily, countrywide, because security has been breached at homes and worksites by persons intent on making an easy living at the expense of others. The network for these illegally acquired building materials and tools has signaled that it has the semblance of organized crime – making it harder for authorities to arrest persons.
Because of the large number of applications, the late 1990s and early 2000s had seen people from Essequibo Islands and Berbice moving to the massive new housing schemes at Diamond/Golden Grove, on the East Bank of Demerara. But that was only one example. This movement from county to county and even from the East Bank of Demerara to West Bank Demerara communities has not been without its challenges.

ADJUSTING
Parents had to find new schools, deal with increasingly heavy road traffic and even increased costs for transportation. While it brought new businesses like taxi services, vegetable trucks and shops, the adjustments had become an issue for many persons. People living on the East Coast of Demerara found themselves owning homes in the West Demerara area.
Using my case as a prime example, I remembered the tedious process of asking for a transfer for my five-year-old son from Grove to La Parfait Harmonie where I live. I went to the nursery school in Grove where I was given a transfer letter. This then had to be taken to La Parfait where they had to indicate that there was indeed room for a transfer.
This was then taken to the Region Four Education Office at Triumph, East Coast Demerara, for further processing.
I was then asked to take some documents to the Region Three office at Vreed-en-Hoop for this to be okayed. After this, I had to return to the Triumph office at Region Four for more processing. That was the end of the process. It cost four or five days of running to and fro, and thousands of dollars in gas.
But this particular experience is just one of the many issues that need addressing.
A new homeowner should also be researching where to source vegetables and cooking gas and a convenient location to pay bills.
If you are working in the city and live at Tuschen Housing Scheme, and have kids going to school, the challenges will include how to drop them off, pick them up, deal with the traffic congestion, and then you still have to deal with your home.
But from observations, one of the biggest challenges for new homeowners remains transportation and its associated costs. Whether you are using your own car or public transportation, it has become quite a hassle. At La Parfait for instance, there is a shortage of minibuses in the morning and a nightmare in the peak afternoon hours at the Stabroek Market park to find one.
As a new homeowner, you need to find ways to cut your monthly costs and “groove” in quickly or it can become an irritant.

THOSE MOSQUITOES
In our past articles, we had spoken of a major problem with mosquitoes, insects and those pesky little water frogs.
For the mosquitoes and insects, there is not much one can do about them. Those sash windows with the mosquito mesh help, but the problem is still there. I suggest that if you have louvre panes or windows without the mesh, start closing them as dusk approaches.
Regarding the water frogs, no one seems to have the answer, except one suggestion to use a cat.
Issues of garbage are also a problem in some relatively new areas, like at La Parfait Harmonie. You either have to burn it or dump it. There is no official dump site here.
I also recommend, as a top priority, that you invest in a water tank because many of the housing schemes, while their supply is stable, sometimes suffer from those off-days.
In a nutshell, owning your home is a grand experience and a life-changing one. In the beginning, there will be a few niggling irritants that will take some adjusting to before you get things straightened out.
When moving in, research, prepare and make decisions to meet those challenges as they appear.
Have a pleasant weekend and continue to send those ideas to [email protected] or call us at 225-8491.

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