City will continue with land auctions

The City of Windhoek this week revealed that land auctions in the Academia Ext 1 and and 2 will go on uninterrupted despite a ministerial decision to stop auctioning of land. City of Windhoek spokesperson Joshua Amukugo said auctions will continue due to the city having entered into contractual agreements with private companies as part of its Public Private Partnerships before the instruction from the Ministry of Regional, Local Government to stop selling the erven via auctioning of land. He said that the City of Windhoek and stakeholders are reconsidering if auctions will be revised. “It is important to note that income generated from the public auction shall be deposited in the Revenue Account where the profit shall be distributed among the parties involved with City of Windhoek as  owners of the land, Old Mutual, Bank Windhoek and Betula Nigra trading as Acacia Investments.” Amukugo said. The sizes of the erven availed for auction range from 494 square meters to 845 square meters. The upset prices ranged from N$420 000.00 to N$612 000. The erven were sold to the highest bidder, and the cheapest erf was sold for N$850 000 while the highest was N$1 350 000. 250 erven in Academia are still up for auction. He also said that auctions are allowed as per the Local Authority Act and the ministerial directive was an alienation method.

The City of Windhoek will share the profits amounting to N$85 million equally with the developers. Amukogu said this will help in availing serviced low income erven in partnership with governments’ mass housing initiative in the Otjomuise extension 10 area So far 8 buyers have cancelled their bids to due to technicalities and what Amukugo described as a tense situation and that more cancellations can be expected. He also said that some bidders were turned away by the bank due to the bank depreciating the value of the unserviced land. Requesting the bidders to top up the additional amount.