Kingston, Jamaica — 22 March 2024
The Prime Minister has announced that the National Housing Trust will reserve at least 10 per cent of its housing solutions in each development for contributors under the age of 35, with an estimated 4,300 solutions available to young Jamaicans over the next five years. The announcement, made during the National Budget Debate, is accompanied by the launch of a starter home programme delivering one-bedroom apartment complexes with 100 per cent financing of up to $15 million available to qualifying young contributors.
The starter home units will include an optional buy-back clause, allowing the NHT to repurchase the unit from the mortgagor within 15 years of the original sale. The arrangement is designed to give young buyers a first foothold in homeownership without permanently locking them into a small unit as their needs evolve. The buy-back option functions as a built-in exit path: contribute to the property’s equity, then trade up with the NHT’s assistance.
Why Young Buyers Need Specific Policy
Young Jamaicans face a compounded affordability problem that older cohorts did not encounter at the same intensity. Property prices have risen significantly since 2015. The required deposit for a purchase, as a percentage of household savings for a typical 28-year-old, is substantially higher in 2024 than it was for their parents’ generation at the same age. Contribution periods are shorter, accumulated savings are lower, and the gap between what the NHT can lend and what properties cost in accessible locations has grown.
The 10 per cent reservation addresses the supply side of the problem: guaranteed allocation of NHT solutions to the under-35 cohort rather than open competition with older, better-capitalised contributors. The 100 per cent financing option addresses the deposit barrier that stops many young buyers from transacting at all, even when they can demonstrate the income to service a loan.
The Advance Deposit Loan
Accompanying the starter programme is an NHT Advance Deposit Loan, which allows contributors aged 35 and under to access up to $2 million from their approved NHT loan upfront to cover the deposit required on a purchase. This product directly attacks the deposit barrier rather than the loan serviceability problem. For a young buyer with sufficient income to pay a mortgage but insufficient savings to cover a 10 per cent deposit on a $15 million property, the $2 million advance loan is the difference between completing a transaction and remaining a renter.
“The under-35 programme is one of the most thoughtfully designed housing policy packages Jamaica has seen in years,” said Dean Jones, Managing Director of Jamaica Homes. “The reservation, the 100 per cent financing, the starter home with buy-back, and the deposit advance loan: these products work together as a system rather than isolated measures. The architect of this package understood that young buyers face multiple simultaneous barriers, not just one.”
What 4,300 Solutions Over Five Years Looks Like
Four thousand three hundred solutions over five years is 860 per year. Distributed across Jamaica’s 14 parishes, that averages roughly 60 solutions per parish annually, a figure that highlights both the scale of what is being offered and the reality that demand will significantly exceed supply in popular locations. The 10 per cent reservation creates a ring-fenced allocation within each scheme, not a parallel pipeline of youth-only developments. Competition within the reserved allocation will still be real.
But 4,300 first-time homeowners under 35, in homes financed at subsidised NHT rates with deposit support, represents a cohort of young Jamaicans whose relationship to property, wealth accumulation, and economic security will be fundamentally different from those who did not get a key. That difference compounds over a lifetime. The starter home programme is an investment in Jamaica’s next generation of middle-class property owners. It is the right investment to make.
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