Kingston, Jamaica, 22 February 2024
The National Housing Trust has set out plans to spend $46.58 billion in the 2024/25 fiscal year on housing construction, a $12.61 billion increase on the previous year that reflects the government’s intent to significantly accelerate the delivery of housing solutions across Jamaica. Among the projects in the pipeline is the second phase of Friendship Oaks, a housing development in St Elizabeth that will add 750 units to the parish’s housing stock and represents one of the most substantial NHT-backed residential investments the parish has seen in recent years.
The Friendship Oaks Phase 2 project forms part of a broader pipeline of five developments totalling 3,250 units that the NHT is in the process of contracting. The other developments in this tranche are spread across Galina in St Mary, Dry Valley in Trelawny, and Greater Bernard Lodge in St Catherine, reflecting the NHT’s effort to distribute housing supply across multiple parishes rather than concentrating it in the Kingston metropolitan area. For St Elizabeth, the confirmation of Friendship Oaks Phase 2 in the NHT’s active pipeline is a significant signal of institutional confidence in the parish as a viable housing market.
The NHT’s Evolving Model
The scale of the NHT’s housing expenditure plans reflects a significant shift in the institution’s operational model over recent years. Since the 2019 launch of its Developers Programme, the NHT has moved from being primarily a mortgage lender to an active enabler and purchaser of housing developments. Under the programme, the Trust provides land to developers as security for financing, reimburses infrastructure costs in phases, and commits to purchasing 80 per cent of completed units, with the remaining 20 per cent sold by developers on the open market. Fourteen pre-qualified developers have come on board since the programme launched, facilitating more than 11,000 houses across 13 projects.
The NHT’s Guaranteed Purchase Programme operates alongside the Developers Programme and has proved particularly attractive to developers who need certainty of demand before committing to large-scale construction. For parishes like St Elizabeth, where the private development sector has historically been less active than in Kingston or St James, the GPP offers a mechanism for bringing formally developed, NHT-financed housing to communities that might otherwise be passed over by commercial developers focused on higher-volume markets.
What 750 Units Means for St Elizabeth
Seven hundred and fifty housing units in a parish the size of St Elizabeth is a meaningful addition to the formal housing stock. The parish’s housing market has been characterised by a significant proportion of self-built, informally constructed homes, many without formal planning approval or registered land titles. The introduction of NHT-backed formal housing provides an alternative pathway for families who want to access the security of a properly titled property on NHT financing terms, which offer interest rates below the commercial market and repayment periods aligned to long-term affordability.
The location and design of Friendship Oaks Phase 2 will determine how well it addresses the actual housing needs of St Elizabeth residents, particularly in terms of its proximity to employment, schools and services. Housing schemes that are built without attention to connectivity and services often struggle with long-term demand and community viability. For the NHT’s investment to translate into lasting value for St Elizabeth’s housing market, the development will need to be more than a collection of units. It will need to function as a community.
A Parish in Transition
St Elizabeth’s property market is at a genuinely interesting juncture. The combination of highway extension planning, NHT housing investment, growing south coast tourism and the long-term potential of the Pelican Bar and coastal leisure corridor is beginning to create the conditions for a structural uplift in the parish’s residential appeal. Formal housing development at scale is one of the clearest signals that institutional confidence in a market has reached a threshold worth acting on. For families and investors who have been watching St Elizabeth from the sidelines, the Friendship Oaks expansion is a signal worth noting.
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