Susan Gordon, Business Reporter

The National Housing Trust (NHT) has invested an initial $135 million in the acquisition of 200 serviced lots in the Morris Meadows development in St. Catherine.

It now plans to utilise 150 of the lots to construct detached two-bedroom houses, under its Labour & Small Materials Programme.

The first 53 units should be completed at the end of this month into April, representing the first phase of the development, said the National Housing Trust.

Construction began in September last year.

Phases two and three are slated to be delivered by August 2007 and February to March 2008, respectively.

Repayment for loans

The 200 serviced lots were allocated to the NHT as repayment for a loan the state agency gave NF Barnes Construction & Equipment Company Limited to finance the 414 lot subdivision at Morris Meadows.

NHT has been undertaking several of these types of projects ? loans for lots ? which gives it easier access to land for the purpose of housing development.

Recent housing developments at Orange Park and Cherry Gardens in Kitson Town, St. Catherine were attained through a similar type arrangement.

NHT?s senior general manager for construction and development, Donald Moore, told Sunday Business that the serviced lots at Morris Meadows were, on average, 350 square metres(3,770 square feet) in size, and were purchased at a unit price of $675,000 each.

Location of meadows

Morris Meadows is located in the western section of Portmore, some four kilometres from the Mandela Highway heading towards Spanish Town.

NHT has placed the first set of houses on the market for $3.8 million each ? a price subject to escalation ? plus closing costs of $4,347.50.

Phases two and three will retain the detached two bedroom design, but a cost per unit is not yet fixed for those phases. The house sizes for those phases is 775 square metres.

For the $3.8 million units now on the market, the NHT projects earnings of $566.2 million.

A single NHT contributor, taking out the maximum allowable mortgage loan of $3 million from the trust to finance the Morris Meadows purchase, are required to be earning at least $16,950 per week to qualify for the loan.

The downpayment would be $804,347.50, and the mortgage would amount to $23,299.63 per month.

The other 50 NHT lots, were sold by NHT last July as serviced lots on which buyers will do their own construction.