Benin, the adventure of establishments devoted to real estate loans is cut short. With one exception: Senegal. The Banque de l'Habitat du Senegal (BHS) is going from strength to strength. Endowed at its creation with an envelope of 10 billion CFA francs (15 million euros), it saw its balance sheet grow by 9% in 2018, to 379 billion CFA francs. And the BHS indicates that it has financed 220,000 families and mobilized 30 billion CFA francs in credits for five projects in Diamniadio, the new town imagined by the Senegalese government to relieve congestion in Dakar. But this Senegalese success conceals a disappointment with the housing bank model on a regional scale. “In the Uemoa zone, the Mali Housing Bank (BHM) was absorbed by the Malian Solidarity Bank (BMS), which does not have housing as its core business. Those of Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina and Benin have been sold or no longer exist. Today, only the Banque de l'habitat du Sénégal is doing well”, sums up Modibo Cissé, former boss of the BHM and now chairman of the board of directors of Bank of Africa Mali. Driven mainly by the public authorities in their infancy and centered on support for the real estate sector, these establishments do not keep their promises. “[It is] a specific market where the quality of the actors is not the same as elsewhere, and above all the importance of the resources and their maturity require a particular technicality”, explains Mamadou Bocar Sy, general manager of the BHS . The entry in 2016 of the Banque de l'habitat du Mali (BHM) into the fold of the BMS enabled the latter to enhance its assets. But this acquisition also signs the death certificate of an independent bank which was exclusively dedicated to the real estate sector. The Banque de l'Habitat du Burkina Faso (BHBF) suffered the same fate. Mahamadou Bonkoungou, the CEO of the Ebomaf construction group, released at the end of 2017 nearly 7 billion CFA francs to take control of the establishment. The real financial arm of the executive's housing policy, the BHBF was until then nearly 85% owned by public institutions. The new regulations in UEMOA, which requires banks to have a minimum capital of 10 billion CFA francs, served as a gateway for Mahamadou Bonkoungou, but at the same time diluted the establishment's real estate mission. . Moreover, housing does not appear in its new name, International Business Bank (IB Bank). IB Bank will still be involved in financing the plan for 40,000 social housing units at a cost of 450 billion CFA francs, launched by Burkinabè President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, but the institution now presents itself as a universal bank. As for the Ivorian State, it decided in 2015 to privatize and transform the Banque de l'habitat de Côte d'Ivoire (BHCI) into a universal bank. "The bank's resources do not allow it to carry out its mission", justified Bruno Koné, then government spokesman, at the time. BHCI has nevertheless remained a housing bank, thanks to its acquisition in 2017 by the Canadian mortgage investment specialist Westbridge Mortgage Reit. But it now finds itself at the heart of the turmoil, with the Ivorian press reporting daily liquidity shortages. In the summer of 2019, the boss of Westbridge, trying to stem the persistent rumors of bankruptcy, launched: “There is no risk of closure. Finally, in 2018, Bank of Africa (BOA) merged its subsidiaries BOA Benin and Banque de l'habitat du Bénin (BHB). Born fifteen years ago from a partnership between the Beninese State and the Pan-African private bank but having never proven itself, BHB is therefore no longer.

According to Modibo Cissé, the successive disappearance of the various establishments devoted to housing stems from an original sin: "They were not endowed with long-term resources from their establishment, whereas they must grant loans over periods ranging from fifteen to twenty years. This mismatch of maturities creates cash flow problems, insofar as it is demand or term deposits, in the best of cases, that supply loans repayable over long periods. Dramane Sanou, a former executive of the BCEAO and currently a lawyer at the Paris bar, points to a legal and institutional vacuum between States and banks in the granting of mortgages. “Because borrowers do not have enough guarantees, banks did not grant loans or, when they do, it is on difficult terms and at high rates. States could intervene at the level of guarantees by allocating facilities (tax or fee exemptions, etc.) to promote access to real estate ownership through housing banks,” he suggests. “Only Côte d'Ivoire has developed specific regulations to govern mortgages in its law [of June 15, 2016] on consumer protection. Mali has some provisions relating to this area, but on the whole the countries do not have specific regulations for this sector”, specifies Dramane Sanou. Based on the Malian experience, Modibo Cissé recites a string of constraints – from the lack of companies specializing in building construction to policies for the construction of social housing – which divert many potential customers from the housing bank. At the same time, reminds Dramane Sanou, it should be borne in mind that the preferred model in the region is that of the universal bank. “This means that all the banks are subject to the same rules so play on the same ground, he explains. Consequently, banks other than housing banks can also implement the rules of the prudential system, which promote the granting of loans for access to residential real estate in particular. There is therefore no discrimination in favor of the latter, which must develop other engineering to be competitive. Which they obviously struggle to do.

The balance sheet of the Banque de l'habitat du Sénégal grew by 9% in 2018, to CFAF 379 billion. Sylvain Cherkaoui for JA The Banque de l'habitat du Sénégal has mobilized 30 billion CFA francs in loans for five projects in the new town of Diamniadio, near Dakar.