Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein in­sists the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) trans­fer fee pol­i­cy, which sparked con­fu­sion last month, is not in ef­fect.

The HDC had cir­cu­lat­ed a doc­u­ment propos­ing a five per cent fee on trans­fers with­in fam­i­lies and ten per cent on oth­er sales, re­plac­ing the pre­vi­ous flat ad­min­is­tra­tive fee of $700.

The pro­pos­al drew crit­i­cism, with many de­scrib­ing it as a so-called “in­her­i­tance tax,” sim­i­lar to what the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress had pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cused the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment of plan­ning while in gov­ern­ment, claims the PNM de­nied.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee ini­tial­ly said the pol­i­cy was on hold, but re­ports from home­own­ers and on so­cial me­dia in­di­cat­ed some peo­ple were still be­ing told the fees ap­plied.

“The is­sue with the HDC in­her­i­tance, what­ev­er they’re call­ing it, and that ten per cent, I think the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing would have ad­dressed that in Par­lia­ment. If any per­sons are be­ing charged this fee, they could present the in­for­ma­tion to the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, and it can be dealt with ac­cord­ing­ly,” Ho­sein said at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day.

The is­sue arose af­ter a Jan­u­ary 29, 2026, HDC doc­u­ment in­tro­duced the new fees with­out the knowl­edge of Min­is­ter Lee.

In re­sponse, the pol­i­cy was placed “un­der dis­cus­sion,” with Lee and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der con­firm­ing the $700 fee re­mains in ef­fect un­til the HDC board pro­vides fi­nal guid­ance.

Ob­servers said it marked the sec­ond re­cent in­stance in which Lee ap­peared out of the loop on HDC de­ci­sions.

The first in­volved a pro­posed pol­i­cy to reg­u­larise il­le­gal oc­cu­pants of HDC homes, which was al­so halt­ed.