HDC HIKE ON HOLD

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Sev­en­ty-two hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­dorsed a new five per cent Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) trans­fer fee and 10 per cent prop­er­ty pur­chase, the pol­i­cy now ap­pears to be on hold.

Af­ter pub­lic con­dem­na­tion over the pro­posed fee hikes, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee, who ini­tial­ly was un­aware of the new pol­i­cy, said yes­ter­day the pol­i­cy is now “un­der dis­cus­sion.”

And Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing, Phillip Alexan­der, has con­firmed the orig­i­nal $700 trans­fer fee re­mains un­til talks with the board on the new pol­i­cy are com­plet­ed.

The con­tro­ver­sy be­gan on Tues­day, when for­mer Hous­ing min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell shared a HDC doc­u­ment which an­nounced the fees as part of a new pol­i­cy. The doc­u­ment, shared via his Face­book page, showed an HDC let­ter dat­ed Jan­u­ary 29, where, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, the new five per cent and 10 per cent fees were im­ple­ment­ed.

An­swer­ing ques­tions on the mat­ter out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Lee said, “We’re still try­ing to work on it be­cause I’ve asked cer­tain ques­tions on it and they (HDC board) will get back to me.”

Pressed on whether the new fees were a def­i­nite pol­i­cy, Lee said, “It is a dis­cus­sion. I didn’t say no, but it is un­der dis­cus­sion.”

Asked if that meant the orig­i­nal $700 fee to trans­fer and sell prop­er­ties re­mains, he re­peat­ed, “That is still un­der dis­cus­sion.”

How­ev­er, he could not pro­vide a time­line for when the “dis­cus­sions” with the HDC board would con­clude.

When Guardian Me­dia not­ed that HDC let­ters had al­ready been cir­cu­lat­ed to the pub­lic, he replied, “Un­less you could tell me now if any­body was asked to pay that trans­fer fee, un­less you could bring some­body and tell me… One let­ter might have been re­cir­cu­lat­ed all over.”

He said for a home­own­er to re­ceive a let­ter, they would have to vis­it HDC to ap­ply for per­mis­sion to trans­fer the prop­er­ty first. He said HDC has al­ways had a pol­i­cy where a home­own­er needs con­sent to trans­fer their prop­er­ty.

He al­so de­nied he is con­stant­ly be­ing by­passed by the HDC on its poli­cies.

How­ev­er, the trans­fer fee is­sue was the sec­ond in­stance where Lee seemed to be out of the loop on a HDC pol­i­cy change.

In De­cem­ber 2025, HDC chair­man Feeroz Khan in­di­cat­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion was con­sid­er­ing a plan to reg­u­larise “squat­ters” oc­cu­py­ing HDC prop­er­ties. At the time, Lee ap­peared to be caught off guard by this plan.

That was al­so his re­sponse on Tues­day, when news broke of the new trans­fer pol­i­cy.

Asked yes­ter­day if he was be­ing left out of de­ci­sions by HDC, he replied, “I would not say that.”

Mean­while, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der ap­peared less con­fused than Lee on the is­sue, as he con­firmed the orig­i­nal $700 fee re­mains for now when asked the same ques­tion.

“I think that might be a fair as­sump­tion to make.”

Though he too did not want to give a def­i­nite an­swer con­firm­ing or deny­ing what the pol­i­cy is, he said, “I think that you should re­fer that ques­tion to the chair­man of the HDC, be­cause as of now we’re wait­ing on fi­nal guid­ance, so I don’t want to speak out at it… Un­til it changes, the old pol­i­cy still ap­plies, yes.”

At­tempt­ing to give clar­i­ty to the de­ba­cle, Alexan­der said there was a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

He said, “We end­ed up with a lit­tle bump in the road, so un­til we get past that bump in the road, we will all be guid­ed ac­cord­ing­ly… I don’t know if it was a back­lash. I think that there was a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion and I think that has been re­solved and af­ter that, we’re good.”

Asked if some­one jumped the gun at HDC by leak­ing the new pol­i­cy, he replied, “I don’t even want to an­swer that. So, as Min­is­ter Lee said, he’s go­ing to do his own lil in­ves­ti­ga­tion and I’m go­ing to wait and see what hap­pens.”

Speak­ing about a gap in com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween HDC and the Hous­ing Min­istry, he said, “It’s not re­al­ly a gap, it’s that this min­istry and that en­ter­prise, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, has a lot of work to do to meet the Prime Min­is­ter’s man­date. There’s a lot of stuff that is out­stand­ing, that was held over from the last gov­ern­ment. We’re clear­ing up those things. There’s a lot of wrong that was done and we need to fix those things and they’re on top of that, so we’re mov­ing for­ward. Some things may not be as per­fect as we want them, but we’ll get there.”

At­tempts to con­tact Khan for clar­i­ty on the HDC pol­i­cy were fu­tile yes­ter­day.

The con­tro­ver­sy be­gan on Tues­day when for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell shared a HDC doc­u­ment on Face­book re­veal­ing the pol­i­cy had tak­en ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 29. The pol­i­cy re­vealed that there would be a new five per cent fee on the trans­fer of prop­er­ties and 10 per cent trans­fer fee on the sale of prop­er­ties, which were to be based on the mar­ket val­ue at the time of pur­chase of the prop­er­ty.

Mitchell slammed the Gov­ern­ment for the changes.

Af­ter hear­ing the pol­i­cy was on pause yes­ter­day, Mitchell said, “If this new harsh and op­pres­sive pol­i­cy re­cent­ly in­tro­duced by the HDC sur­round­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion for con­sent to as­sign prop­er­ty was put on hold, then that is wel­comed news. How­ev­er, clients who are in the mid­dle of sales trans­ac­tions with the HDC have not been made aware that the new pol­i­cy has been put on hold. In any event, that new pol­i­cy by this UNC-gov­ern­ment was dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, prej­u­di­cial and ar­guably un­law­ful and had it been al­lowed to go through the HDC and tax­pay­ers would be fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant le­gal chal­lenges in the near fu­ture.”