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Property Reporter
HOLYLAND high density suburb, a housing scheme in Kadoma is nearing completion, much to the excitement of prospective home owners who have been on the town’s waiting list for several years.

Arguably the biggest real estate company in Kadoma, Craft Properties are the developers of the suburb targeting low to medium income earners, thanks to a Public-Private Partnership with the Government.

Public-private partnerships can be referred to as limited privatisation, and involves investment of private risk capital to design, finance, construct, operate and maintain a project for public use for a specific term during, which a private investment consortium is able to collect revenue from the users of the facility.

The Kadoma project boasts of 1 573 residential stands, with some partially completed housing units while a number of them are at various stages of construction.

The co-director of the company, Yeukai Muchemwa had this to say of the project: “We are almost done now and we are on course to fulfil our Zim-Asset mandate albeit in a small way.

“We have given the beneficiaries two options, either to build them a two-roomed core-house or they do the construction themselves.

“Beneficiaries can build structures of up to eight rooms as long as they comply with the town’s by-laws.

Also, cognisant of the economic hardships currently bedevilling the country, we have offered our beneficiaries flexible monthly payment terms of up to 10 years.

Laying of water reticulation pipes for phase one of the project is complete.

“We have soldiered on and will definitely meet our December 2017 target and strongly believe that phase one of the project shall be habitable by year end with complete standard services like water and sewer reticulation” she said.

The company has donated 10 residential stands to the disabled and underprivileged members of the Kadoma community as part of its social corporate responsibility programme. Ms Muchemwa said most land developers had failed to deliver and ended up increasing the cost of stands to make up for their budgetary shortcomings.

“Poor costing for projects by land developers usually punishes the home seeker through endless upward price adjustments.

“Such poor planning results in land developers failing to put up requisite on-site infrastructure on targeted settlements, hence the need to apply sound business ethics,” said Ms Muchemwa.

Several housing schemes around the country do not have proper infrastructure as land developers fail to complete the projects due to finding challenges arising from oversight on budgeting.