Nedbank Corporate and Investment Banking’s (NCIB’s) Affordable Housing Development Finance division has concluded an agreement with the Development Bank of Southern Africa’s (DBSA’s) Green Fund to jointly provide R120-million in funding for the development of around 400 affordable green housing units in the Western Cape and Gauteng.
This would be achieved through the creation of a concessionary loan funding pool administered by Nedbank and would enable the development of sustainable green housing in the affordable housing market.
The agreement also included the monitoring of energy and water consumption in these housing units to verify the actual savings.
“Green affordable housing combines social and environmental sustainability to promote access of lower middle income individuals to better quality housing units with lower running costs.
In South Africa, a new benchmark for environmentally sustainable housing was the Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies (Edge) tool, which was developed by the International Finance Corporation for application in developing economies, and recently adopted locally by the Green Building Council of South Africa as the basis for a new green housing certification system.
In the case of housing sales, mortgage lenders would play a critical enabling role by taking into account the likelihood of lower operational costs in their assessment of home loan applications relating to units in green developments.
