TIG Post

Tag: property

  • Our lands are our heritage; we will protect them – Parks and Gardens

    Our lands are our heritage; we will protect them – Parks and Gardens


    Tension heightened at the Headquarters of the Department of Parks and Gardens on Wednesday, April 17, as the department faced challenges with land encroachment.

    Rev Dr. Ezekiel, claiming to be a trustee of approximately two acres of Parks and Gardens lands near the Russian Embassy in Accra, asserted ownership over portions of their property.

    Department workers intervened to disperse suspected landguards reportedly acting on behalf of the self-proclaimed trustee.

    Director of Parks and Gardens, Dr. Kingsford Adams, has reaffirmed their commitment to vigorously protect the department’s property.

    “This is our property, this is our heritage. The land belongs to the park and gardens. We didn’t invite the workers they came voluntarily to fight the intruders… they thought that they were cheating us and stealing their property.

    “So, it is out of their own love that they have for their department that is why they are there in their numbers. So, anybody that comes around to disturb us we will not forgive him, we will not allow anybody to own our lands.

    “What this Dr. Ezekiel is doing is seriously uncalled and we are not going to allow him to own our land. Nobody has sold this land to him,” he stated.

    Dr. Adams strongly criticized Dr. Ezekiel’s actions, questioning the legitimacy of his claim and his integrity.

    “He is a lair. That is why I ask if he is a reverend minister or what? We went to Cantonment Police Station with all our documents. We sent our certification of allocation because this place was given to us by an Executive Instrument (E.I.) this man came with a handwritten indenture. So, the divisional police commander asked him about the certificates to the land, and he told him that he only had that on his phone,” he added.

  • Rent shortages may result from retiring landlords

    Rent shortages may result from retiring landlords

    A generation of landlords with buy-to-let mortgages are retiring and selling up, leaving fewer properties to rent, an estate agency has said.

    Hamptons Estate Agents estimates around 140,000 people who bought property in the 1990s to rent out sold them last year to fund their retirements.

    The agency warned numbers were likely to continue rising and new landlords were not filling the gap left behind.

    Younger people do not have the money to invest in rental properties, it said.

    Hamptons said its research was based on its network of agents and data from the Office for National Statistics. It added it was reflective of the entire rental market which currently has a pool of 2.75 million landlords.

    Age was the dominant reason for the exodus, but lower-than-average returns on investments, the general economy, tax and regulatory changes were also to blame, it said.

    Researcher Aneisha Beveridge said this “combination of everything” meant older landlords had simply had enough.

    While rents for new tenants were relatively high, “quite a high proportion” of older landlords had long-term sitting tenants that achieved relatively low returns, Ms Beveridge said.

    “But some are not selling up all of their properties, they’re just selling one or two so they can afford a cruise or time on the golf course or to be able to help their families,” she added.

    The research found about 96,000 landlords will turn 65 each coming year across Great Britain.

    It said this was in addition to the 924,000 who were already over the age of 65, and that between 2010 and 2022 the number of landlords retiring annually had doubled.

    The agency found London was most affected as many of the first buy-to-let mortgages were used for new, low-rise city centre flats – the highest proportion of properties being sold by long-term landlords.

    Hamptons also noted the departing landlords left a gap in the sector that was not being filled by a new generation of investors.

    “The numbers don’t stack up,” Ms Beveridge said. “Look at how the demographics have changed for younger people struggling to afford to own their own home, let alone a buy-to-let.”

    The agency said while house price growth continued to slow, rents were still rising sharply.

    While there was a little more choice of rental properties this year compared with 2022, overall the number of rental homes on the market seemed to have found a “new normal” at nearly two-thirds below pre-pandemic levels.

    Campaign group Generation Rent, which works to raise awareness of the issues facing tenants, said “we shouldn’t be surprised” by the trend of ageing landlords selling up.

    Spokesman Dan Wilson Craw said: “For nearly the past three decades the government has relied on amateurs saving for retirement to provide a large proportion of the nation’s homes.

    “The real problem is the chronic failure to build enough homes in places where people want to live.”

  • Henry Quartey leads team to demolish 100s of unauthorised homes, structures at Sakumono Ramsar site

    The Accra Regional Security Council has begun the demolition of several unauthorized structures at the Sakumono Ramsar site.

    The exercise, being led by the Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, will span a 3-day period, during which all buildings and structures that have been unlawfully erected within the core zone of the Sakumono Ramsar site will be destroyed.

    This follows several cautionary measures and announcements issued out to property owners and inhabitants of these structures by the Council.

    The move is in line with efforts to preserve the ecological state of the site.

    “Leading the team on Wednesday morning, the minister, Henry Quartey said, “There are people deliberately encroaching on government lands. Lands that have been acquired by Executive Instrument for the purposes of the state. One of that you know was the CSIR, by the grace of God, we have been able to do that. Today we are here, during Kwame Nkrumah’s time, lands from this area all the way to Tema was acquired by Executive Instrument, where the head leads was under TDC.

    “Some part of the acquired lands was ceded for Ramsar lands. We are told that the total acreage is over 3000 acres. We are talking about 18,000 plots. As we speak, we are reliably informed that well over 2,500 acres of government land has been encroached upon with impunity,” he said.

    The Sakumono Ramsar Site is a wetland with a core area of about 1200 hectares, according to the Forestry Commission.

    The site, which is of international importance, has been designated for ecological purposes including migratory animal life for especially birds among others under the Ramsar Convention. It is also supposed to serve as a holding base for gallons of flood water from the adjoining communities.

    But over time, the Ramsar site has been encroached on by real estate owners and is being used for purposes of farming, fishing, recreation, among others, thereby posing danger to the ecology.

    Currently, the core area of the site is less than 600 acres, according to the Forestry Commission.