After recently counting houses, The Federal Housing Corporation (FHC) has snatched 500 illegally rented houses from tenants throughout Addis Ababa. They had been rented to government officials and business people who have since been removed and will now be rented to higher government officials or workers at federal institutions.
Reshad Kemal, CEO of FHC told the press that the investigation process is continuing and if any houses are being rented unlawfully they will be confiscated.
“Our duty is to rent the houses to higher government officials and federal workers but we have seen that some are living in them even though they have houses in other places. We are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior so we will snatch these houses when this happens.”
Capital asked Reshad Kemal if they will revise the rental prices of the residential places at all.
“For the time being no but currently they are being rented for 8 birr per square meter, but in the future it is possible.’’
Currently the FHC has over 17,000 houses in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa.
In related news FHC announced that revised rental prices for shops would be implemented over three years.
“We have received complaints from the tenants about the price, however we feel the rates are fair and match the market. We have done two things to make things easier. First, instead of applying the new price at once we will allow the tenants to pay 30 percent of the new price during first year and then, during the second year they will pay 35 percent and during the third year they will pay the fully revised price. They also will not have to start paying the higher prices until February.
Many tenants were unhappy with the price increase and some demonstrated outside their offices at Mexico Square, but Reshad said the corporation conducted a thorough study before implementing it.
He added that they adjusted the revised price to embassies and foreign companies from USD 92 to USD 50 per square meter and for non-profit organisations they reduced it from 339 birr to 140 birr per square meter.
The new regulation allows shops to conduct any legal business.
FHC took three years to revise the business shop rental and offices which has angered some of the tenants.
The increase takes into account the location of the houses, their size and the material they are made from.
Under the new revision 477 shops are set to pay 1,000 birr per month, 3,078 shops between 1,000 up to 2,000 birr, 447 shops between 20,000 to 30,000, three shops from 200,000 up to 300,000 birr and two buildings will pay 400,000 birr per month.
The corporation has not made any price revision for business shops in the last 40 years.
Before the new revision 3,880 of the shops were paying 65 birr per square meter and 2,052 shops were paying below 10 birr for a square meter. Surprisingly the rental fee of another 279 shops was below one birr per square meter.