The plan could do more than widen access to home ownership, by turning residential property into a source of real liquidity, letting homeowners borrow against their houses and pour the capital into businesses and other productive ventures. The post The billion-dollar bet on Zimbabwean homes appeared first on newsday .
ZIMBABWEANS have long lived with a strange contradiction: owning homes worth thousands of dollars, yet unable to touch a cent of that value.
WestProp Holdings Limited thinks it has found the fix —mortgages.
The property developer is targeting a US$1 billion fund to capitalise a new mortgage bank offering Zimbabweans home loans of up to 30 years.
If it works, the plan could do more than widen access to home ownership: it could turn residential property into a source of real liquidity, letting homeowners borrow against their houses and pour the capital into businesses and other productive ventures.
WestProp chief executive Ken Sharpe told NewsDay Business the company was already capitalising the proposed bank and engaging potential investors.
“We are busy capitalising, and we’re targeting a billion-dollar fund for mortgages because we want to offer longer mortgages — 10-year, 20-year, even 30-year mortgages,” Sharpe said.
Rich on paper, poor in the market
The idea is simple: a house should not just be a place to live or an asset to hold — it should unlock capital.
Sharpe estimates Zimbabwe has more than US$100 billion worth of homes but says most of that wealth sits frozen because the mortgage market is shallow and long-term financing is scarce.
“People are rich on paper but poor in the market,” he said.
“The only way to create wealth is to create liquidity. It’s no good just owning a house and sitting under it with no money. You need to be able to borrow against the house to make business, to make some profits.”
That’s the logic behind WestProp’s mortgage bank: a pool of long-term capital to finance home purchases over 10, 20, even 30 years — a sharp break from the short-tenure lending that has defined Zimbabwe’s property market.
Already being tested
The model is not theoretical.
At Pomona City, WestProp introduced 10-year mortgages to make its properties more affordable — an experience Sharpe says proved the demand exists.
“When we started Pomona City, we offered 10-year mortgages because we felt that was what the market needed,” he told NewsDay Business in April.
WestProp’s mortgage book now stands at about US$30 million.
The company has since extended the model to its Chivhu project, where longer repayment periods have drawn thousands of inquiries.
But affordability alone will not decide whether this works. WestProp needs deep, patient capital to lend over decades — exactly the kind of money that has been hardest to find in Zimbabwe.
“The problem the banks have is long-term money. As a developer, we realised the mortgage product is needed in Zimbabwe,” Sharpe said.
Syndicating the billion
No single investor will fund the full US$1 billion, Sharpe concedes, so WestProp is syndicating the raise.
“There have been some commitments. Obviously, no one entity will fund a billion into Zimbabwe. It must be broken down, so we are looking at syndicating it,” he said. “Several parties are now finalising that first billion. I think by the end of the year we will finalise.”
The company is also building out the bank’s leadership —a chief executive is yet to be appointed — and bringing in strategic shareholders. WestProp itself will hold no more than 30% of the institution.
Sharpe points to Switzerland as proof of concept: a market where a deep mortgage financing system allows property owners to leverage their assets into real capital.
“We believe mortgages are the way, so we are very focused on that,” he said.
The US$20 billion question
WestProp estimates that unlocking just 20% of Zimbabwe’s US$100 billion property stock would release roughly US$20 billion into the economy — with outsized knock-on effects.
“For every dollar of mortgages, it creates about US$3 of economic activity,” Sharpe said. “If Zimbabwe unlocks US$20 billion in mortgages, the economy could accelerate progress toward becoming an upper-middle-income economy by 2030.”
It’s a bold claim — and one that depends on more than WestProp’s ability to raise money.
Can Zimbabwe commit to 30 years?
A mortgage is a bet on the future. Borrowers must trust their incomes will hold up over decades; lenders and investors must trust the currency, interest rates, property values and regulations won’t shift under them.
That is a tall order in Zimbabwe. The Reserve Bank says the country is halfway through its transition to a ZiG mono-currency system, with ZiG usage needing to climb from about 40% to 60% before exclusive local-currency use kicks in, among a host of conditions. The central bank has pledged that existing US-dollar contracts will still be honoured — but experts have flagged concerns over policy consistency and called for repeal of the statutory instrument preserving the multicurrency regime until December 31, 2030.
For a 30-year mortgage lender, that uncertainty is not a footnote — it is the whole ballgame. A lender needs to know what a loan will be worth in five, 10, or 20 years. Investors need confidence they can repatriate returns without the rules changing overnight.
The prize
WestProp wants to build a long-term financial market inside an economy still gripped by short-term monetary and policy uncertainty. But the potential payoff is large: a housing shortage, a deep pool of titled property, and a scarcity of affordable long-term finance add up to a significant untapped market.
If WestProp raises its US$1 billion, stands up the mortgage bank, and sustains affordable long-tenure lending, it could reshape how Zimbabweans finance property —shifting housing from a static store of wealth into an economic engine for entrepreneurship, investment and spending.
Who knows? Zimbabwe’s next major source of economic liquidity is sitting under the roofs of millions of homes.
The post The billion-dollar bet on Zimbabwean homes appeared first on newsday.
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