About 75,000 new 40/60 condos to be built in Addis Ababa

Ethiopia Online
By Tesfaye Getnet
10 August 2015

he Addis Ababa Saving Houses Development Enterprise (AASHDE), which is facing serious backlash for delaying the delivery of condominiums, is targeting to build 75,000 new condominium units under the 40/60 condominiums scheme in the next five years.

The enterprise also plans to construct 15,000 residential units featuring new designs in the next Ethiopian year. One of the new features included in the experimental design is increase in the number of floors per building from the current 12-floor design to 15-story buildings. The design is being tested on one building in the Haya Hulet area.

Currently, about 33,253 condominium units are under construction on 12 sites. However, due to poor capacity of contractors and consultants, and inadequate government supervision, most of the projects are lagging behind schedule. Only 1,292 housing units in Senga Tera and Kality are on schedule for delivery.

Yohannes Abayneh, Public Relations Head of AASHDE, told Capital that the new design is yet to be approved by the city council. “We plan to build taller condos after thoroughly assessing land conditions ensuring the safety of the design. The height increase will accommodate more residential units in small spaces,” Yohannes said.

Most of the projects are reportedly lagging behind because contractors are not fully committed to their work. “When houses are not delivered on time, we should ask ourselves what causes such failure because people invest in housing expecting timely deliveries. Many contractors take advance payments but do not do what is expected of them. We have seen that the construction sector is full of embezzlement, corruption and inefficient contractors,” an anonymous source explained. The source recommended that the enterprise suspend relations with inefficient contractors.

When registration began in August 2013 for one, two and three bedroom condominium units under the 40/60 scheme, each was estimated to cost 162,000, 250,000 and 386,000 birr respectively. The enterprise recently announced that the price would increase due to a price hike in construction materials.

According to a Commercial Bank of Ethiopia report, 156,932 people are registered for 40/60 condominium units. 9,584 have paid the condo prices in full. As of June 2015, 10 billion birr was collected from clients under this housing scheme.


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