Business View Caribbean | October 2022

22 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 9, ISSUE 10 the land we are giving away.” With thousands of homes planned for the program, the government intends to use the green energy generated to raise green bonds to pay off the land and buy additional land to expand the project further. On the retail side, the project has created an entirely new segment of potential homeowners comprising individuals earning too little to save the large sums needed to apply for a traditional mortgage. “Since the project does not require any down payment and does away with the need to buy land, this new market segment has mortgage providers very excited because it opens up a whole new marketplace to them that didn’t qualify before,” explains Hoyos. And the excitement cuts across all market segments. “When we launched, we expected a few thousand people to be interested,” Hoyos adds. “But the day we opened applications, our website crashed due to a sudden influx of traffic. After restoring the website, sixteen thousand applications came in within a short time.” Hope Inc has processed three thousand five hundred of those applications, which all have approved mortgages and are waiting for Hope to construct and hand over their homes. Hope Inc vs. Traditional Mortgages Besides giving away free land, another major innovation the program employs is online applications, which traditional mortgage lenders in Barbados have not yet embraced. Hoyos expounds. “In the traditional model, someone interested in a mortgage would have to physically visit various lenders, fill out each provider’s lengthy application forms, and then decide the best offer.”