Ghana’s leading mortgage provider, First National Bank, has hosted a virtual housing fair to help reduce the country’s housing deficit, which currently stands at almost two million.

Instead of hosting the housing fair at a physical location, as is usually done, First National Bank Ghana opted to take its annual housing fair completely online this year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That meant creating a platform for real estate developers, buyers and sellers to interact with each other while prospective homeowners viewed available properties and learnt about the diverse range of mortgage products the bank offers.

“A lot of people look forward to this major event on our annual calendar as a bank and we’ve had people constantly calling in to check if we will host it once again. Organising this year’s housing fair was a very exciting challenge for us because of the pandemic,” says CEO of First National Bank Ghana, Dominic Adu. “We needed to create a virtual reality environment on the internet where we could show prospective buyers the properties on offer; taking them to the property sites without having them at the physical location where the property is situated. Our solution was to film all the properties and capture all their details for the patrons of the fair to watch and interact with the sellers and our staff on our social media handles on YouTube. We are very glad that as challenging as it was, we made it.”

The Executive Head of the Home Loans Business at First National Bank, Kojo Addo-Kufuor, is also happy with the patronage and successful organisation of the virtual housing fair and points out that one major challenge for most Ghanaians, resident and non-resident, who want to own properties is “the difficulty in finding the right property at the right price.”

He says: “First National Bank Ghana helps to resolve this challenge by organizing the housing fair to showcase the many choices of houses, property designs, land and other infrastructure to enable buyers to decide on what they are looking for while providing the funding for it with our complete suite of mortgages. All the videos are still available online and we invite the public to check them and reach out to us so we can help with the best mortgage solutions. Our aim is to make as many Ghanaians as possible acquire the property they can call their own.”

“You don’t need to be burdened about using your entire savings to acquire a home,” Mr Addo-Kufuor concluded. “Whether you are young, old, resident or a non-resident Ghanaian, First National Bank can help you own a property in Ghana now. Today. We have bespoke mortgage products in our portfolio, perfect for the type of property you want and your financial capacity.”