HDC warns public against housing scams

Peo­ple are be­ing tar­get­ed by scam­mers pos­ing as Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) or Min­istry of Hous­ing agents, who claim they can se­cure HDC homes by by­pass­ing the of­fi­cial al­lo­ca­tion process in ex­change for mon­ey, the HDC has warned.

In a me­dia re­lease on Fri­day, the HDC said it had re­ceived re­ports of in­di­vid­u­als of­fer­ing pri­vate as­sis­tance to help peo­ple ac­quire HDC homes out­side the of­fi­cial sys­tem.

The HDC said such prac­tices were il­le­gal and would fail.

It warned that any pur­chas­es made through unau­tho­rised chan­nels would be nul­li­fied, the prop­er­ties re­claimed by the HDC, and any mon­ey paid to third par­ties would most like­ly be lost.

The HDC said in­ves­ti­ga­tions were un­der­way in­to re­ports that peo­ple had paid mon­ey in­to pri­vate ac­counts and were al­lo­cat­ed hous­es that were still list­ed on the HDC sys­tem as va­cant and avail­able for sale.

It stressed that any­one oc­cu­py­ing an HDC prop­er­ty with­out the di­rect in­volve­ment of the cor­po­ra­tion would be evict­ed.

The HDC re­mind­ed the pub­lic that the on­ly le­git­i­mate way to ac­quire an HDC home is by reg­is­ter­ing through its web­site or in per­son at its South Quay, Port of Spain of­fice, and ob­tain­ing pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion through the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank or an­oth­er le­git­i­mate fi­nan­cial or mort­gage in­sti­tu­tion.

The cor­po­ra­tion al­so said it was prepar­ing to con­duct a na­tion­wide au­dit of its prop­er­ties and de­vel­op­ments to de­ter­mine whether any had been re­moved from its records and sold pri­vate­ly.

It warned that any such sales would be treat­ed as il­le­gal, oc­cu­pants would be evict­ed, and the mat­ters re­ferred to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

The HDC urged any­one who dealt with third par­ties, re­ceived as­sur­ances with­out prop­er deeds or leas­es, or was oth­er­wise un­sure whether their pur­chase or oc­cu­pan­cy of an HDC prop­er­ty was le­git­i­mate to con­tact the cor­po­ra­tion im­me­di­ate­ly.