Housing: Developers and bankers pass the buck on soaring prices

Faced with a structural housing shortage estimated at 500,000 units, real estate developers and bankers disagree on the cause of high housing prices in Senegal. A guest on the "Seneweb Eco" program on Sunday, July 12, 2026, Babacar Souleymane Faye, president of the Senegalese Association of Private Real Estate Developers, pointed to taxation as the root cause of these high prices.

"The closest partner of the real estate developer is the State. On a housing price, the State earns approximately 50 to 60% between the tax on profits," he states, adding the weight of bank financing for the developers themselves and the inflation of materials, citing a truckload of sand "that you used to buy for 50,000 CFA francs and that can cost up to 200,000 CFA francs."

According to him, these constraints are severely hindering production. "We are no longer producing as we should because there are bottlenecks in our economy," Mr. Faye continued.

For his part, Mamadou Guèye, a former executive at the Housing Bank of Senegal (BHS), puts the scope of these elements into perspective and believes that the problem is also linked to the low income of households.

Taking the example of a social housing unit costing 20 million CFA francs financed over twenty years at a zero interest rate, he states that the buyer should repay approximately "83,000 CFA francs per month", which would correspond to "a net salary of around 250,000 CFA francs".

According to him, this income level "immediately excludes a skilled worker, whereas the need for housing is found much more among the economically weakest social categories."

Babacar Souleymane Faye maintains that the issue cannot be reduced to bank financing alone. "Housing is expensive because many actors are involved in determining the cost of housing," he pointed out, before adding that "the disappearance of the concept of affordable housing and social housing is what poses a real problem."

In this regard, the two guests felt that a stronger involvement of the State, particularly on land issues and mechanisms for accessing housing, remains essential to making housing more accessible to the greatest number.