Opinion

A house in two days

January 03, 2019
A house in two days

Abdullah Al-Mazhar



WE all have seen the Ministry of Housing build a house, to be specific putting together the pieces of a house, in two days.

This was a nice effort but at the same time it cannot be described as an achievement. I am not trying to undermine the efforts of the Ministry of Housing, but I cannot call it an achievement because the construction method was being used for many years elsewhere. Many of the government buildings were built that way many decades ago.

It is not an achievement for another reason. Let us assume that the ministry was the one to invent this type of construction on Planet Earth but the problem of people searching for houses cropped up in Saudi Arabia not because of the time required for constructing one. If it were so, then I believe people would accept the idea of building a house in two days as something wonderful.

Another problem is that when I, as an individual, search for a house to buy, I will be thinking more of the area of the house and its price. These are the factors that will determine whether I will buy the house or not. I will not be interested in the duration in which the house was constructed. Whether it was built in five minutes or in five years will not make any difference to me as the buyer of the house.

However, I must admit here that the Ministry of Housing is doing a great job, but it looks like I will not benefit from its efforts. The ministry contacted me many times through SMS, informing me that I was nominated for one of their housing units and all what I have to do was to visit the site and choose the house that I want to live in.

I went to the site twice and I found people who were working hard and guiding me to the place where I will get the loan and the developing company where I will be buying the house.

I understand their efforts but this is something that I can do myself. I can easily go to the bank myself and get a loan, and then go to a developer and buy the house I want. I do not need the ministry to act as a mediator between me and the bank or the developer.

Also I find it hard to trust any department that relies on famous personalities on social media for advertisement. There are some government departments, like the Ministry of Housing, that need to realize that the only effective advertising is for people to actually live in houses that they did not meet with any difficulty in finding. As far as I know, people now live in PowerPoint presentations and not in actual houses.


January 03, 2019
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