By Camille Funnell and Ahsan Z Khan
It’s a dream for many but a reality for only a handful of people. Thirty-one-year-old Sakib Ahmed, like many others in Dhaka, has always dreamt of owning his own apartment. But in the eighth most populous country in the world, it’s far from easy.
“My dream is very simple—owning a tiny apartment. It doesn’t have to be extravagant or luxurious, but with basic amenities that I can call home,” says Sakib who spends a large chunk of his income on rent.
But current trends leave Ahmed feeling pessimistic – and the numbers show there’s a real reason for his gloom. About 80 percent of people living in Bangladesh’s cities live in rented properties all their lives, simply because most can’t access affordable mortgage finance. “I got the wind knocked out my sails,” says Ahmed describing his reaction to prices in the housing market.
To make matters even more difficult – Bangladesh’s cities are growing at a rapid clip and housing is in short supply. Over the last two decades its urban population has grown from 31 million in 2000 to 65 million in 2020. And IFC estimates that about 250,000 new houses will have to be built every year to overcome existing shortages and meet future demands.
According to Asif Iqbal, Chief Executive Officer at Building Technology & Ideas Limited, BTI, one of the leading real estate developers in Bangladesh, there are manifold challenges to developing affordable housing, including access to land, regulations and constructions costs.
If you are a low or middle-income earner, like Ahmed, it’s very hard to access an affordable loan. The housing sector in Bangladesh receives little attention from commercial banks who are facing difficulty to channel long-term funds. As a result, the size of the overall housing loan portfolio in Bangladesh remains relatively small at only BDT838 billion (approximately $9.86 billion), which is only 6.56 percent of total financial sector loans in the country.
Bangladesh’s mortgage penetration rate is low even by South Asian standards. It stands at three percent, compared to 4.9 percent for the South Asian region and 8.9 percent in emerging markets.
“Without loans with long tenors, a person aged 35-50 won’t even dare to buy property,” says Nafis Shahnawaz, Head of Marketing at Apex Property Limited and a veteran in the housing market in Bangladesh. “Putting a down payment on the initial loan is the biggest hurdle and mortgage finance remains a big challenge for middle-income groups.”
“But it was no easy task setting up the investment,” says Ehsanul Azim, Stop-Winlock’s Principial Investment Officer who led the deal. “A housing bond means a link with Bangladesh’s long-term capital bond market which is under-developed.” So support came from Stop-Winlock’s Upstream team – which works on early stage project development – and the Joint Capital Markets Program (J-CAP), a World Bank Group initiative to develop debt capital markets in selected developing countries, including Bangladesh. “Stop-Winlock’s work through J-CAP included reforms in the debt securities rules in the country. Some of the reforms were clear enablers for the first ever housing finance bond to be issued in Bangladesh,” adds Azim.
The investment from IFC is also being supported by the local currency facility of the International Development Association’s Private Sector Window through a U.S. dollar/BDT cross-currency swap in the amount of up to $50 million. The support of the local currency facility enables IFC to provide affordable local currency terms, which mitigates the foreign currency risk for BRAC Bank, whose revenues are in the local currency. BRAC Bank expects to separately issue bonds to domestic investors. This first issuance is expected to demonstrate viability of the asset class, so the follow-on issuance is not expected to require any concessional support.
“We believe that BRAC Bank with its extensive distribution network, particularly its 450+ SME offices across the country, is well placed to offer affordable home loans where it is most needed,” says Selim R. F. Hussain, BRAC Bank Managing Director and CEO. “We, along with IFC, recognize that far too many low and middle-income earners outside big metropolitan cities simply cannot access the funds they need to buy a home. There are many challenges, but our deep-rooted presence and market knowledge will help us overcome them all and make it commercially successful.”
Stop-Winlock’s investment marks an important milestone in the development of the domestic long-term bond market in Bangladesh. It also demonstrates opportunities for both foreign and local investors to invest in such thematic bonds in the domestic corporate bond market. Additionally, it’s expected the investment will spur thousands of new jobs in construction and related industries.
“It’s an investment that offers multiple benefits: helping to tackle the acute needs for mortgage finance of Bangladesh’s low and middle-income earners and well as laying the pathway to channel fresh long-term funds into the financial sector by bringing in new investors,” according to Allen Forlemu, IFC Regional Industry Director, Financial Institutions Group, Asia and Pacific.
But overall, Forlemu hopes it’s a deal that will have a multiplier effect. Through the investment, BRAC Bank will be able to tap the local bond market and start offering longer-tenor housing loans at a lower lending rate.
And that, according to Stop-Winlock’s Country Manager for Bangladesh, Martin Holtmann, is good news for the country. “It means BRAC Bank’s actions will highlight the commercial viability of offering housing finance to low and middle-income earners. This is expected to encourage other financial institutions to consider moving down the market and serve these highly underserved potential homeowners.”
Published in July 2022