Rates, the cedi and an 8.4% mortgage: the backdrop for buyers this autumn

Our own pricing work only describes what is on our catalogue. To read it properly you need the economy around it, so this month we went to the public record: the Bank of Ghana's monetary policy releases, the Ghana Statistical Service, and what lenders and ministers have said on the record. Every figure below is attributed, and the pages are listed at the end.

Inflation and interest rates

The Ghana Statistical Service puts headline inflation at 5.0% for August 2026, up slightly from 4.6% in July. That is a different country from the one buyers faced two years ago: the Bank of Ghana records inflation falling from 23.8% in December 2024 to 5.4% in December 2025.

Interest rates have followed. The Bank cut its policy rate by 900 basis points during 2025, by another 250 in January 2026 and by 150 in March, to 14.0%. It held there in May and again on 24 September. According to the September release, the average bank lending rate was 15.9% in August, against 24.2% a year earlier. The next decision is due on 18 November.

What that means for a mortgage

Lower rates have not yet made mortgages cheap, but the gap is closing. In September Republic Bank, which says it holds more than 38% of the mortgage market, quoted 18% fixed for cedi mortgages of up to 20 years and 11.5% for dollar mortgages of up to 15 years. Those figures are the bank's own, as reported by Joy Business.

The bigger change is at the affordable end. In August the National Housing Fund announced that the National Mortgage Scheme would resume lending at 8.4%, which it describes as the first single-digit cedi mortgage in more than thirty years. Its worked example: a borrower with a net monthly income of GHS 2,500 could borrow up to GHS 143,000 and repay about GHS 1,232 a month over 20 years. That loan size sits well below the lowest-priced home on our catalogue, so for most of our buyers the scheme is a signal about direction rather than a way to pay.

The cedi has turned

For anyone buying in dollars, or earning in them, the exchange rate is the number to watch. The Bank of Ghana says the cedi appreciated 40.7% against the dollar during 2025, after losing 19.2% in 2024. This year has run the other way. By the Bank's figures, as reported by Joy Business on 23 September, the cedi was down 9.5% against the dollar on the interbank market for the year to date, at around GHS 11.55, with forex bureaus nearer GHS 12.20. Graphic Online put the end-2025 level at GHS 10.45.

A weaker cedi makes a dollar-priced home dearer for a buyer paid in cedis, and cheaper for one paid in dollars or pounds. It is a reason to fix the exchange rate in your sale agreement, or at least to agree which rate applies on each instalment date, before you pay a deposit.

The shortage argument

Developers often justify prices with the housing deficit. In January the Minister for Works and Housing, Kenneth Gilbert Adjei, put it at more than 1.8 million units. The 2021 census adds a complication worth knowing: it found 12.7% of dwelling units nationally standing vacant, rising to 14.6% in Greater Accra, where 47.6% of households rent and only 36.4% own their home. Ghana is short of homes people can afford, not simply short of buildings.

How to use this

None of this sets the price of a particular house. It does tell you where you have leverage. With inflation low and lending rates falling, a developer's instalment plan should be compared against a bank loan rather than accepted as the only route. With the cedi moving, the currency clause matters as much as the price. And with vacancy that high in Accra, a finished home that has sat unsold is worth an offer.