Ghanaian business magnate and Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Sir Sam Jonah, has expressed serious concerns about the country’s booming luxury real estate market, suggesting that many high-end developments are being financed through dishonest or illicit means.
Pointing to the growing number of vacant high-rise apartments in Accra’s affluent neighbourhoods—such as Airport Residential, Cantonments, and Labone—Sir Jonah questioned the legitimacy of their funding.
“If you walk around my area, Airport Residential, Cantonments or Labone, [look at] all the high-rise buildings going up. Everywhere in the world, developers go to the bank to take loans for those developments,” he said during an interview on Starr Chat with Bola Ray.
Empty Apartments, Unanswered Questions
Sir Jonah highlighted the puzzling reality of unoccupied luxury apartments, noting that if they were funded through conventional, bank-backed loans, developers would be compelled to rent or sell units quickly to service debts.
“Some of these apartments are all empty. Do you think that if money were collected from banks, banks would not have moved in? What I’m saying is that they are being funded through sources which are not honest. Go around and ask, ‘Why are apartments empty’? if you had borrowed money, if you had gone to the bank to borrow money to build, you would ensure that those apartments are fully occupied.”
He further pointed out the lack of foreclosure or repossession activity by banks, suggesting that these projects are not linked to conventional financing.
Banks Unable to Support Genuine Development
Drawing from his extensive experience in corporate finance, Sir Jonah argued that Ghanaian banks lack both the capital strength and affordable interest rates to fund large-scale real estate projects.
“Ghanaian banks are not that well, and the balance sheets are not strong enough to give you patient [huge capital]. The interest rates are just astronomical. You can hardly make it as a developer.”
With commercial lending rates between 25% and 35%, he explained, no developer relying on legitimate bank loans could afford to build multi-million-dollar properties and leave them vacant for years without collapsing financially.
A Symptom of a Deeper Problem
Sir Jonah warned that the proliferation of unoccupied luxury properties reflects a broader systemic issue—the failure of financial and regulatory institutions to monitor wealth accumulation and enforce accountability.
He described the trend as a manifestation of an “uncontrolled, almost insatiable quest for money at all costs”, which he said is distorting Ghana’s economic priorities and reshaping the urban landscape through questionable means.
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