By Christopher Arko
Accra, Aug 10 GNA-Mr Emmanuel Tawiah, Board Member of the Ghana Real Estate Professionals Association (GREPA), has called for an alternative way of providing affordable housing for the country.
He said there were new building technologies which could be used to replace the usual building materials to bring down the cost of housing in the country.
Mr Tawiah mentioned thus at the launch of the Africa Real Estate Conference and Expo (ARCE) 2022 in Accra.
GREPA is made up of professionals such as lawyers, brokers, surveyors among others who focus on the transaction side of the real estate industry.
The five-day conference which is slated for September 12 -16, 2022 at the Labadi Beach Hotel is on the theme: “The role of Real Estate and infrastructure in achieving Sustainable Goals”.
The conference is expected to attract over 200 companies and 3,000 participants from the real estate industry, both local and international.
The goal of the ARCE is to develop the real estate industry in Ghana and Africa through good policy advocacy, stakeholder collaborations, sustainability, adopting technologies in housing and infrastructure, etc being the biggest and impactful industry driven conference for the development of real estate in Africa.
Mr Tawiah also explained that the real estate sector was a key driver of national development and at the same time an industry that brought together many other industries and professionals, saying real estate was a unifier of resources, industries, and professionals.
He said the conference was intended to ensure stakeholder engagements, collaboration, improved regulations thereby establishing connectivity between the stakeholders and professionals.
He said the stakeholders comprised of the policy makers and regulators, real estate institutions and association like GREDA, GHIS, Landlord Associations, brokers and agents, civil engineers, architects, surveyors, manufacturing companies for steel production, building materials, new building technologies, roofing companies, tiles companies, glass companies, furnishing, decorations, among others.
Mr Tawiah also expressed confidence that the impact of the conference would be phenomenal as many professionals and investors will have the opportunity to learn new things to scale up their businesses and network with relevant stakeholders.
Madam Odette Kumi, President of GREPA in her comment expressed confidence the passage of the Real Estate bill would help to sanitize the real estate sector of the country.
She said before the passing of the new law people could just wake one day and claim to be estate agent or broker without any certification which she says was giving the industry a bad name.
“We are working to ensure that before a person becomes an estate agent, he must first have to be a member of GREPA” she added.
GNA