CategoriesInsights Real Estate

How to choose a house to fit your investment objective | A Guide to buying a house in Ghana

Are you in the market for a new house in Ghana? With so many houses for sale, finding your dream home can be a daunting task. But don’t worry, we’re here to help. In this post, we’ll provide you with a guide to finding the perfect house for sale in Ghana.

1.Determine Your Budget

Before you start searching for houses for sale in Ghana, it’s essential to determine your budget. You don’t want to waste time looking at properties that are out of your price range. Consider your income, savings, and other financial obligations when determining your budget.

2.Choose a Location

The location of your dream home is just as important as the house itself. Ghana has a range of residential areas, each with its unique characteristics. Determine the location that suits your lifestyle, proximity to work, and access to amenities. Some of the popular residential areas in Ghana include East Legon, East Legon Hills, Cantonments, and Airport Residential Area in Accra, and Spintex Road, Tema, and Sakumono in Greater Accra.

3.Work with a Reputable Real Estate Agent

Working with a reputable real estate agent can make the process of finding a house for sale in Ghana much easier. Real estate agents have extensive knowledge of the market and can provide you with valuable insights into the properties that fit your budget and preferences. They can also help you negotiate the price and ensure that the transaction goes smoothly.

4.Consider a reputable and trusted Real Estate Developer

There has been an upsurge of housing developers in Ghana, but not all have the capacity to deliver the quality you may require. Some developers like Regimanuel Gray, who have been building for over 30 years, have extensive infrastructure (road networks, underground drainage systems, street lights etc) to support their housing development. Moreso the future of your property must be hedged with estate management services to ensure that the value of your investment appreciates considerably with time.

You should verify the commitment the Developer has for infrastructure and the management of the future physical outlook of the community where your property will be located.

5.View the Property in Person

Once you’ve identified a few houses that fit your budget and preferences, it’s essential to view them in person. This will give you a better sense of the property’s condition, location, and features. When viewing the property, pay attention to details such as the neighborhood, access to amenities, the condition of the property, and any potential repairs that may be needed.

Finding your dream home in Ghana doesn’t have to be a daunting task. By determining your budget, choosing a location, working with a reputable real estate agent, browsing online listings, and viewing the property in person, you can find the perfect house for sale in Ghana. Remember to take your time and conduct thorough research to ensure that you make the right decision. Good luck!

 

CategoriesInsights Real Estate

The Ultimate Guide to Installment Payments | Buying a House in Ghana

Are you struggling with Financing to buy a house in Ghana? Our Ultimate Guide to Installment Payments can help you!

Buying a house is a significant investment and can be daunting, especially when you don’t have a lump sum to pay upfront. Fortunately, buying a house in Ghana with installment payments is a viable option being introduced by real estate developers. With installment payments, you can spread out the cost of buying a house over time, making it more affordable for you.

In this blog post, we will guide you through the different installment payment options made available by real estate companies in Ghana, their pros and cons, and provide you with tips on how to choose the best option for you.

Installment Payment Options for Buying a House in Ghana

There are several installment payment plans that you can use to buy a house in Ghana. These include:

  1. Developer’s Payment Plan: This plan is usually offered by some real estate developers as part of their sales and marketing strategy and would not exceed 12 calendar months. Under this plan, you make monthly payments to the developer until the full cost of the house is paid off. The interest rates charged on these plans can vary, or be non-existent in most cases, and they can come with different terms and conditions.
  2. Rent-to-Own Plan: In this plan, you rent the house for a certain period and then own it after you have paid the agreed amount. The payments you make during the rental period go towards the purchase of the house. These plans can also come with different terms and conditions. In Ghana, this option is not usually available for the purchase of premium houses. It is mostly available with housing developments which are funded (fully or partly) by the Government.
  3. Structured Payment Plan: This is a customized payment plan that can be negotiated with the seller of the property. The prospective homeowner would usually agree on a payment schedule and interest rate and make payments accordingly. It is advised that you critically check the details of the agreed terms and have both seller and buyer sign off with their respective witnesses.

Comparison of Installment Payment Plans

To help you choose the right installment payment plan for your needs, we’ve compared the key features of each of these plans in the table below:

Payment Plan Interest Rate   Length of Plan Eligibility Requirements
Developer’s Payment Plan No Usually, it does not exceed 12 months. Requires proof of income, creditworthiness, and an initial deposit.
Rent-to-Own Plan Varies Varies and may last for years. You can occupy the property while paying for it. May require proof of income, a deposit and creditworthiness
Structured Payment Plan Negotiated Usually, it does not exceed 12 months. May require proof of income, creditworthiness, and an initial deposit.

Pros and Cons of Installment Payment Plans

Here are some of the pros and cons of using installment payment plans to buy a house in Ghana:

Pros:

  1. You can own a home without a lump sum payment upfront.
  2. Installment payment plans can make buying a home more affordable and accessible.
  3. Some payment plans can come with lower interest rates compared to other forms of credit.

Cons:

  1. Some installment payment plans can come with higher interest rates compared to other forms of credit.
  2. You may be required to make monthly payments for an extended period.
  3. You may have to pay additional fees, such as closing costs.

Tips for Choosing the Best Instalment Payment Plan

  1. Compare different installment payment plans offered by real estate developers.
  2. Consider the interest rates and terms of each plan to determine which one is the most affordable for you.
  3. Make sure you understand the terms and conditions of the plan you choose, including any additional fees and payment schedules.
  4. Determine if you meet the eligibility requirements for the plan you want to use.

Here is a table that compares installment payments offered at Regimanuel Gray Ltd.

Developer Property Payment plan Interest Rate
Regimanuel Gray Adom Gate Pearls 40% deposit, 40% at lintel, 20% at completion 0%
Regimanuel Gray Adom Gate Pearls 50% deposit, remaining spread for 18 months 0%

Bank Financing (Mortgage)

Bank financing is another installment payment option available in Ghana. It involves obtaining a mortgage from a bank or other financial institution to finance the purchase of a house. The bank sets the interest rate and payment terms based on the applicant’s credit history and other factors.

Bank financing typically offers higher interest rates than developer financing and the application process is also more involving, and the approval process can take longer. It is advisable to compare the various plans based on what the banks are offering in terms of Interest Rate, Down Payment, Repayment Period and the Maximum Amount you can qualify for.

Pros and Cons of Installment Payment Options

Here are the pros and cons of each instalment payment option for buying a house in Ghana:

Developer Financing Pros:

  • Faster approval process
  • A more straightforward application process
  • No need for a credit score

Developer Financing Cons:

  • Higher interest rates
  • Smaller maximum amount
  • May require a large down payment

Bank Financing Pros:

  • Lower interest rates
  • Larger maximum amount
  • Longer repayment period

Bank Financing Cons:

  • Lengthy approval process
  • Stringent credit score requirements
  • Additional fees

 

CategoriesInsights Real Estate

Creating your desired home with Regimanuel Gray

Our guiding principles have shaped our ethos of excellence in the real estate industry in Ghana. We are dedicated to securing your investment by offering you a conducive community where your property can flourish. This is how we achieve it:

Well-Planned Community Infrastructure

 – Extensive underground drainage system to prevent flooding.
 – Properly maintained tarred roads.
 – Effective streetlights for enhanced safety and visibility.

Professional Estate Management

Our communities are professionally managed, by our Subsidiary RGEMC, to ensure security, orderliness, and the prevention of nuisance and other activities that have the propensity to devalue the community. (RGEMC – Regimanuel Gray Estate Management Company Ltd.)

Good Rental Income for Investment Property Owners

Owners of investment property at Regimanuel Gray enjoy a great deal of convenience and peace-of-mind with their buy-to-let properties.

Our platform facilitates the generation of regular rental income.

 – Your rent will be collected on time by our Estate Management Company.
 – Your property will be well-maintained before, during, and after the rental period.

Location

– Our developments flourish because we get the place right.
– Our research & development team ensures that the locations we choose give our homeowners appreciating value for generations.

CategoriesCompany News

RG Group Chairman leads Team to kick-start 2023 with Corporate Prayers

The Chairman of Regimanuel Gray Group, Mr Emmanuel Botchwey, has urged his staff and management to remain resolute for the year 2023, as the Company marked the beginning of the new year with its Annual Corporate Prayers.

While quoting the third stanza of the Methodist Hymn 528 – “Green pastures are before me, which yet I have not seen…” – he urged staff not to rule out the possibilities of challenges during the year but to be confident that the new year also brings along budding opportunities. “New things are going to happen. Be prepared however for the challenges it may come with. Do not waver in the midst of such confrontations, strive to find solutions from the Throne of Grace – Christ! (the author and finisher of our faith),” he added.

Mr Kwesi Abbey-Sam, the Company’s long-standing spiritual father, gave words of exhortation. The Vice Chairman, Mrs Regina Botchwey and Group Managing Director, Mr Ibrahim Bah seized the occasion to also encourage the staff. They both hinted at an improved approach, to operationalising and monitoring the Strategic Plans of all Subsidiaries, from this year onwards. The Leadership of the various Subsidiaries who were present, with their respective teams, included Mr Seth Ntiamoah Jnr (of Regimanuel Concrete Products Ltd – RCP), Mr Frank Ofori (of Bessblock Concrete Products Ltd), Mr Yaw Arhin (of Desjoyaux Pools Ltd), Mrs Joan Folson Agyare (of Regimanuel Gray Estate Management Company Ltd.) and Mr Samuel Bortey of Landing Restaurant.

 

Media Contacts:
Micheal Djanie – mdjanie@regimanuelgray.com
Mrs Bridget Maison – bbotchwey@regimanuelgray.com

CategoriesCompany News

30th Anniversary Launch Thanksgiving Service

This date fell exactly 30 years after the incorporation of the Company which took place on Thursday, 11th April 1991 in Accra. There was therefore no better date on which to launch the Anniversary.

Also in attendance were representatives from the Subsidiaries, Consultants and Corporate friends who have played vital roles in the Regimanuel Gray story, thus far.

The service started at 9:30 am and lasted for about 2 hours. The message preached by Very Rev. Jacob French from Matthew 4:12-25 entailed an encouragement to Regimanuel Gray to appreciate the New Beginnings being ushered in by this 30th year, along with promises of blessings of and peace from the risen Saviour.

In the address, on behalf of Regimanuel Gray Limited, Mr. Isaac Acheampong, the Head of Legal & Admin, honored the Visioneer of the Company and thanked everyone gathered for their support of the Company. He further made mention of the lyrics of Methodist Hymn 427; Make you His service your delight, He’ll make your wants His care.

After the service, the invited personnel as well as the representatives of the various departments in the Company gathered together for a group picture, as shown above.

It was indeed a blessed day and a beautiful event to kickstart the anniversary celebrations.

CategoriesCompany News Industry News

Ghl Bank, Regimanuel Gray Join Forces To Address Housing Deficit

Ghana’s leading mortgage provider, GHL Bank (formerly Ghana Home Loans) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Regimanuel Gray Limited to collaborate in the delivery of homes and serviced plots to alleviate the acute housing situation in the country.

The signing ceremony took place at the offices of Regimanuel Gray Ltd at La, Accra, and was attended by senior executives of both GHL Bank and Regimanuel Gray Ltd.

In a significant move, Regimanuel Gray Ltd recently commenced the sale of serviced plots at Katamanso on the Accra – Oyibi road. This unique arrangement allows prospective homeowners to design and build their dream homes on plots serviced by world-class infrastructure delivered by Regimanuel Gray Ltd.

Under the terms of the collaboration, GHL Bank shall offer a special land purchase mortgage to prospective buyers of these serviced plots. GHL Bank shall finance up to 80% of the cost of the land and offer a repayment schedule of up to 10 years at negotiated interest rates. Once the homeowner has acquired the plot of land, GHL Bank shall then provide construction loans for the homes to be built. The homeowner may then repay the mortgage in accordance with a pre-agreed schedule.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr. Kojo Addo-Kufuor, Executive Director of Business, GHL Bank, stated that this programme “gives prospective homeowners the best of both worlds”. He added that “being able to build your dream home, designed to your preference, on Regimanuel-quality infrastructure is a great and unique offer that should excite the market”.

“This MoU is clear evidence of GHL Bank’s commitment to mortgages, home ownership, and real estate developers, at a time when we have transitioned from a mortgage specialist to a universal bank”.

Signing on behalf of Regimanuel Gray Ltd., Mrs. Regina Botchway, Vice-Chairman of the company reiterated that the collaboration is in recognition of the shared aspirations of both companies to move the acquisition of homes and serviced plots much closer to Ghanaians and foreign residents.

She said “we at Regimanuel Gray Ltd are proud to have been one of the forbearers to develop the vision and leadership of home ownership and acquisition. GHL Bank is one of the best partners in the market to work with to help push this agenda”.

The Regimanuel Gray New Territory Project at Katamanso is on a land size of about 1,300 acres and is a master planned to include 17,000 houses, commercial areas, schools, religious centres and sports facilities.

The first cluster at Adom Gate, consisting of about 500 expandable houses of different varieties is almost complete.

CategoriesCompany News

Regimanuel Estates Scoops Three Topmost Property Awards

Building Smart in Ghana: The Story of Regimanuel Gray Limited

ACCRA, Ghana, Jan. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — It’s daybreak in Accra, Ghana, and temperatures are already soaring to a searing 30 degrees Celsius. Jobsites around this southeastern Atlantic seaside city are quickly filling up with workers who for the next 8 hours will toil and broil in unrelenting heat and humidity as they play their rightful role in Ghana’s bubbling construction sector.

By contrast, things are somewhat more relaxed at a sprawling job site in Klagon, where Regimanuel Gray Limited (RGL) is building 1,680 apartment units in collaboration with the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) of Ghana. Here, the construction crews are equipped with concrete formwork smart building technology designed and supplied by Wall-Ties & Forms, Inc. (WTF) of Kansas State, USA.

This highly user-friendly rapid formwork construction technology produces concrete structures at least 3 times faster than with traditional construction methods. The structures are also roughly 5 times as strong as the brick-and-mortar equivalent. It’s cast-in-place steel reinforced concrete construction. It’s the future of Ghana, a rapidly urbanizing nation with a housing deficit estimated at 1.5 million homes.

“Our traditional methods of building are too slow,” admits Mr. Emmanuel Botchwey, Regimanuel Gray Limited’s Executive Chairman, revealing that the entire real estate sector of Ghana has been producing barely 10% of the new homes the country needs to build every year to start correcting its housing shortfall.

Regimanuel is Ghana’s leading homes developer. From its incorporation in 1991, the company has built just over 3,000 homes in Ghana. That is roughly 130 homes every year for 22 years. A decent turnover but Mr. Botchwey has not been satisfied with the output.

In early 2006 at an African housing sector conference hosted by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) in Cape Town, South Africa, the RGL co-founder keenly followed a presentation of Wall-Ties & Forms’ aluminum formwork-based rapid construction technology. He was encouraged by what he saw.

“I thought it was a great formwork technology to introduce in Ghana but we were not ready to implement it at that time as we had just invested heavily in block-making plants here and in Sierra Leone,” he says.

Although the block-making business has been hugely successful with RGL projects consuming just over 20% of the products while selling the bulk to an eager market, at the back of Mr. Botchwey’s mind was the WTF technology he saw in Cape Town in 2006.

For one, reinforced concrete structures compared to brick and mortar – masonry – walls are less prone to cracking; the WTF formwork system doesn’t require a high level of specialized skills and amounts of mechanized and manual labor deployed on conventional job sites.

Additionally, the WTF formwork system has definite cost-saving factors not to mention the speed at which the structures seem to practically grow out of the ground.

“Time is money,” avers Botchwey, adding, “With this technology, you build faster, sell faster and cut down on your overhead. It means you make more money quicker and can pay your workers better.

“If you are using borrowed money, it means you will repay your bank loan in 2 years instead of 5 years, so you save on bank interest payments and share the savings with the home buyer,” says Ghana’s top real estate entrepreneur.

It is against this backdrop that Mr. Botchwey and his team traveled to the Kansas City headquarters of Wall-Ties & Forms, Inc. in October 2011 to discuss the acquisition of WTF aluminum formwork for use in the Klagon apartments development project. The equipment was shipped to Accra mid-last year, and after the initial onsite training, construction commenced in July 2012. RGL has sold most of the apartment units just over a year since the project got underway.

Besides the 1,680 apartments, the firm is collaborating with SSNIT on yet another project to build 42 high-end duplex units in the Community 13 area of Accra. RGL has already acquired WTF aluminum formwork for this new project.

Mr. Botchwey discloses that these two housing development projects have generated more than 300 direct new jobs while contributing significantly to efforts to reduce Ghana’s huge housing deficit.

It gets even better. Regimanuel Gray Limited has recently acquired 1,300 acres in Accra on which they plan to build a satellite city with 17,000 single- and multi-family homes within a series of gated communities complete with schools, hospitals, shopping and recreational facilities, and other community support amenities.

This is indeed a herculean undertaking; hardly any single developer is building such a huge number of homes in Ghana or in any other African country for that matter. But it is possible to deliver the satellite city with the WTF mass housing technology considering that some South American developers have produced as many as 40,000 homes annually using the cast-in-place concrete building technology.

Mr. Botchwey estimates that his company will complete the 17,000 homes project inside 10 years and create thousands of new jobs in the process.

In the interim, RGL’s ambition is to accelerate its annual production rate to reach 500 homes built and sold in Ghana.

Decorated as one of Ghana’s top 100 companies, RGL also has solid plans to start building homes in Liberia and Tanzania in the near future. They have already acquired land for the purpose in both countries.

Structures built using WTF’s precision-engineered concrete forms are smooth and straight; they require minimal or no plastering at all. All the openings are precise, which saves the builder ample time in the process of fitting the doors and windows. Not to mention that the forms are good for a guaranteed minimum of 1,000 concrete pours.

Such are the time and cost-saving factors that persuaded RGL to start building the WTF way.

The recipient of the 1998 Ghana Home Finance Company Gold Award for Best Estate Developer, the Ghana Millennium Excellence Award, and the 13th International Construction Award of Trade Leaders Club, Paris, it is little wonder that Regimanuel Gray Limited, Ghana’s premier home builder, is using the world’s best concrete forming system.

Mr. Botchwey says he is satisfied with the after-sale support he is receiving from Wall-Ties & Forms professionals in the USA and Africa. He is not worried about plausible competition emanating from other Ghana and West African homebuilders discovering the WTF cost-efficient way of building.

Africa, he says, lags behind in the provision of decent shelter. “We have lots of catching up to do; it’s the more reason why we in Africa should use modern building methods such as the WTF technology.”