Nigeria must fundamentally restructure its housing finance system and mobilise long-term institutional investments to deliver 500,000 housing units annually, Ebilate Mac-Yoroki, former President of the Mortgage Banking Association of Nigeria (MBAN), has said.
Mac-Yoroki, who is also Chairman of CityCode Mortgage Bank Limited, said the country’s housing deficit, estimated at more than 17 million units, could not be significantly reduced through conventional government budgetary allocations and commercial bank lending alone.
He proposed channelling pension funds, insurance assets and foreign portfolio investments into the housing sector, alongside reforms to land administration and mortgage financing.
The proposals are contained in a position paper titled “Scaling Nigeria Housing Supply to 500,000 Units Per Annum: A Market-Driven Policy Framework for Nigeria”, presented at the MBAN Annual Conference and Gala Dinner in Abuja on Friday.
Mac-Yoroki also called for the establishment of a Central Housing Depository (CHD), a unified digital platform modelled on the capital market’s clearing and settlement infrastructure. The proposed system would digitise property ownership records, reduce land fraud, accelerate title processing and improve investor confidence.
According to him, Nigeria’s housing sector remains constrained by limited access to long-term finance, fragmented land administration, unreliable market information and rising construction costs. Formal housing delivery, he noted, has historically remained below 50,000 units annually.
Achieving an annual output of 500,000 homes would therefore require a tenfold expansion of existing delivery capacity, supported by reforms that make housing a more transparent and investable asset class.
Mac-Yoroki identified the mismatch between the short-term deposits mobilised by commercial banks and the long-term nature of mortgage financing as one of the sector’s most significant structural problems.
He explained that commercial banks typically mobilise deposits with maturities of between 30 and 90 days, making them unsuitable for financing mortgages that may run for 15 to 25 years, particularly at single-digit interest rates.
“The core structural failure of housing finance in Nigeria is a duration mismatch,” he said.
To address this challenge, he recommended financing arrangements that would channel long-term capital from Pension Fund Administrators, insurance companies and foreign portfolio investors into the housing market.
Under the proposed framework, primary mortgage banks and the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) would serve as channels for converting institutional investments into sustainable mortgage financing.
He also advocated expanding the use of Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS), covered bonds, Residential Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and specialised housing debt funds.
Mortgage securitisation, he explained, would allow financial institutions to pool existing mortgage loans and sell them to institutional investors through platforms such as the Nigerian Exchange, freeing up capital for fresh lending.
Residential REITs and forward-purchase investment funds could also enable institutional investors to commit to buying housing units before construction begins. Such arrangements would provide developers with more predictable demand, improve access to financing and reduce the risks associated with large-scale projects.
Mac-Yoroki further proposed blended financing instruments, including green bonds, social housing bonds and government-backed infrastructure bonds, supported by federal credit guarantees to lower borrowing costs.
He said these instruments, combined with targeted subsidies and shared-equity schemes, could improve mortgage affordability for low- and middle-income earners despite prevailing inflation and high interest rates.
