NHA opens innovative centre to boost sales

National Housing Authority (NHA), the statecontrolled housing developer for lowincome earners, plans to open an innovative centre in Bangkok this year, aiming it to support home sales.

The centre will be located in Huai Khwang.
“It will be a onestop home servฌice, with computerised home inforฌmation and room showcases as well as bank branches to extend buyers home loans,” said NHA Governor Tachaphol Kanjanakul. 
The move is part of NHA’s rebranding strategy, in line with its business plan 4.0 which involves “five re” schemes: re-corporate, rebranding, reasset, reequity, and reliability.
Tachaphol, who took charge on November 29, 2016, said the centre would feature two existing buildings with usable space of about 400500 square metres but renovated to have a modern look. 
In addition to bank branches, there would be a coffee shop on the ground floor. 
The renovation is expected to be completed by the end of this year, said Tachaphol. 
He added that NHA staff who would be working at the centre would be newly recruited, focusing on the new generation. 
He said the NHA would modฌernise its brand by adjusting its colour to a more vivid shade of blue. It might add a few more colours to give it a newgeneration look. However, the NHA’s logo will still be the same.
For re-corporate, Tachaphol said he wanted to give employees more room for growth in their career path so that they could contribute more to the organฌisation, resulting in a higher income. 
Under his plan, he would upgrade the status of 80 NHA offices nationwide to become NHA provinces or NHA regions so that each office head could be promoted to higher positions. 
“If we take good care of employฌees, they will take good care of resiฌdents [over thousands of people who live in NHAbuilt flats],” said Tachaphol. 
He said the reasset scheme was to use old assets or build residential buildings where rooms left over after sales could generate income. 
The NHA this year plans to release 14,000 leftover units from its stock of 16,000 units in total, of which about 4,000 units were released. 
He said the NHA has an aggresฌsive marketing strategy targeting different buyers, for example, civil servants if it was a condo project in Nakhon Pathom, where many uniฌversities were expected to be housed, or foreign workers for projects in Pathum Thani and Samut Prakan provinces. 
“We plan to sell built condos as a whole building to business owners or state agencies who want to buy it for their workers in accordance with the Interior Ministry’s policy of improving living standards of workฌers,” said Tachaphol. 
As of now, the NHA has built 700,000 units nationwide, of which 50,000 units were for rent while the remainder were for sale. 
Almost 7,000 new units are expected to be completed this year. Readyforsale units this year are expected to be about 16,600. The average price is about Bt700,000 per unit.
Tachaphol said for the reequity strategy, the NHA would reevaluฌate old buildings so that the organฌisation would have more equity and a lower debttoequity ratio, resultฌing in a more room for borrowing. 
The NHA was setting up a fund for developing residences, which will be subsidised by the government, to help lowerincome owners.
The NHA was also set to proceed with the reliability strategy in order to reduce nonperforming loans as it has guaranteed home loans espeฌcially for the Auarthorn housing projects of 100,000 units worth Bt100 billion. 
Tachaphol said he aimed to not just develop housing, but also the community under the “Smart city” concept, beginning with its condo project in Din Daeng, which is under construction.