CAY HILL–Finance Minister Perry Geerlings operated a backhoe to turn the sod as part of a symbolic ground breaking on Tuesday to signal the official start of construction of the General Pension Fund’s APS Oryx Hills project in Cay Hill.
At Oryx Hills, APS will be constructing 62 homes, including the necessary infrastructure. APS will sell the homes to potential qualifying buyers. Ideally, these will be primarily active participants of the APS fund.
The homes are considered “affordable” for fund participants, with a maximum purchase price of US $250,000, APS Director Nadya Croes-van Putten said during a meeting of the Finance Committee of Parliament on Tuesday, ahead of the ground-breaking event.
A spinoff project for APS will be the financing of underlying mortgages connected to the purchase of the homes. APS is currently in the process of selecting the best mortgage product offered by local banks.
Oryx Hills suffered very little structural damage during the passing of hurricane Irma in September last year. There was slight damage to the entrance structure only. Permits for the project had been requested in June 2017, and took nine months before they were received.
Liccom was awarded the construction contract for the project in mid-June 2018. Construction has started and is slated to take 12 months instead of 24 months due to “value engineering” such as constructing with doubled capacity by Liccom.
APS had organised special information sessions for potential buyers and approximately 300 persons have expressed interest in purchasing the homes. “Therefore, as the need is very high, APS is exploring the possibilities to build more affordable homes,” Croes-van Putten told Members of Parliament (MPs) during the parliamentary session.
In remarks at the ground-breaking ceremony, Croes-van Putten said St. Maarten seems to have an a-typical real estate market. Common market dynamics do not seem to apply here, as the prices of homes have increased consistently over the years, she noted. Consequently, there is limited supply of housing in what one would call “affordable price segment” between US $200 million and US $275 million.
This, she noted, leads to the situation where owning one’s home becomes something that is reserved for persons with an above average income. Unfortunately, hard-working persons cannot see the fruits of their labour in the form of their own home. From inception of APS, some of the questions posed to the fund were whether APS (like APNA) will assist in this area and whether APS will provide financing to participants.
She said it then became a goal of the fund to play a role in helping members benefit from being a participant of the fund, while they are still active / during their career, instead of waiting until they are a beneficiary.
Also addressing guests at the ground-breaking ceremony were Manager of APS Projects Department Kendra Arnell; LICCOM Owner/Director Andre Sneep (general contractor for the project); APS official Franklyn Richards; Public Housing, Spatial Planning, Environment and Infrastructure VROMI Minister Miklos Giterson; and Finance Minister Perry Geerlings.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/79573-ground-officially-broken-aps-oryx-hills-project
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