Socio-Economic Correlates of Housing Finance Strategies in Ibandan, Southwest, Nigeria

This study examines the relationship between housing finance strategies and socio-economic background of developers in Ibadan, southwest, Nigeria. The research is borne out of the fact that social housing has not done much and housing poverty is on the increase in the country. Multistage random sampling was used in selecting 2,646 houses in the area. The questionnaire formed the basic instrument for data collection and was administered to heads of households to collect information on socio-economic and demographic background as well as housing finance strategies. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were employed in the presentation of the findings. MANOVA was used to analyse the relationship between housing finance strategies (Y1 – Y4) and socio-economic background measured by gender (X1), religion (X2), educational background (X3) and employment status (X4). The study found out that the bulk of the respondents (65.7%) were male, while 51.7% practiced Christianity. 35.9% respondents had HND/1st/Postgraduate degree, while 43.9% were self employed; most households however, had membership size of 5 (26.9%). Housing finance strategy in the area was mainly informal finance (93.6%) out of which cooperative societies (85.3%) and personal income (13.4%) served as the major gravitational force of attraction for house developments. Multiple analyses of variance showed that there was a significant relationship between cooperatives societies and each of gender, religion, educational background and employment status. The study suggests among others that, there should be re-invigoration of existing cooperative societies, while more should be established for the provision of housing finance.