A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Master of Business Administration Corporate Management (MBA – CM) of Mzumbe University Dar Es Salaam Campus College
This research was to give an overview of housing finance for low income group in Tanzania. Tanzania suffers from a terrible shortage of good quality and affordable housing. So dire is this shortage that the nation currently carries a 3 million housing deficit coupled with a 200,000 unit annual demand. The objectives which guided the research were, to identify the existing demand and the supply of housing finance in Tanzania, to assess the challenges encountered in accessing housing finance for the low income group, to examine the prerequisite for the accessibility of housing finance among low income group in Tanzania and to evaluate measures to be addressed to improve housing finance for low income group in Tanzania. The study employed the descriptive research design involved the collection of empirical data. It also involved both quantitative and qualitative data collection. Data were collected from 80 respondents from Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development in Dar es Salaam and different people from Dar es Salaam; Methods employed during the data collection were questionnaires, observation and interview, documentary review. The finding show that the high cost of land and building materials have been among the biggest impediments to the supply of affordable housing in Tanzania. Poverty remains the biggest constraint to affordability. On the other hand, not all of the urban populations live above the poverty line. This indicates that urban poverty in Tanzania is high and large proportion of the working age population is involved in the informal sector. In this case most people lend so as to obtain daily needs such as food and clothing since loans for these needs are low in comparison to the loans for house construction. Most of the financial institution which are giving housing loans are to strong enough to give large loans for someone to construct a new house. In this case the loans which are provided are enough for room extension or minor renovations. Few people have little knowledge on loans from the financial institution. Also the bank could make loans for repair, extension, improvement and upgrading. These would support the sequential building and improvement processes currently employed by low-income h or the sequence could be speeded up households. Access to finance would mean that they could be built to good standards.