National Housing Trust, NHT, has released new information on the gender, income and age of buyers which shows that more Jamaicans aged 30 years and below are securing mortgages and that women are buying more homes than men, in general.

The data supplied covered four fiscal years – periods ending March 2015 to March 2018 – so no conclusion could be drawn on whether it signals a change in home-buying trends for women or affirms a long-standing demographic profile. Young persons, on the other hand, appear to be investing more in property.

Within the four-year period, the NHT issued 23,514 mortgages. And for each of those years women accounted for either 58 per cent or 59 per cent of all loans. The agency issued 14,000 mortgages to women and 9,605 to men over the period.

In general, more women qualified for mortgages in the higher income brackets. In FY2018, for example, out of 3,712 of females who secured mortgages, only one earned $6,200 weekly or $322,000 per year. The majority of women borrowers – 1,469 – earned $30,000 and more weekly, or $1.56 million per year or more.

For the other brackets: 656 loans went to women earning $6,200 to $12,000 weekly; 875 loans to women earning between $12,000 and $20,000 weekly; and 711 earning between $20,000 and $30,000 weekly.

The housing agency did not supply comparative data on the income brackets of male borrowers, but on average, more than 50 per cent of mortgage loans in the demographic went to men earning $20,000 and over weekly, or $1 million or more per year.

Meanwhile, the data also shows that whereas four years ago not many younger Jamaicans were qualifying for mortgages, more are doing so now. In FY2015, only 13 Jamaicans aged 18-25 secured mortgages. In the past year, that number was 183 borrowers.

In the 26-30 age group, only 359 borrowers secured mortgages in FY2015. That number nearly tripled to 912 borrowers in the past fiscal year.

Roughly one-third of all loans within the four years went to home buyers in the age brackets spanning 31-40 years.

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