SOYI­NI GREY

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day de­fend­ed a new Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) pol­i­cy, which has in­tro­duced a five per cent fee on the trans­fer of prop­er­ties with­in fam­i­lies and a ten per cent fee on trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing the sale of its prop­er­ties.

Her de­fence came hours af­ter for­mer Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell post­ed a doc­u­ment an­nounc­ing the new pol­i­cy on his Face­book page yes­ter­day, and slammed the Gov­ern­ment for the change. But even while Per­sad-Bisses­sar was de­fend­ing the HDC move, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee claimed to have no knowl­edge of the pol­i­cy and launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter.

Asked about the HDC fee hike, es­pe­cial­ly in light of her par­ty’s pre­vi­ous cam­paign against an “in­her­i­tance tax,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “From what I have been told, it’s that the HDC is sim­ply at­tempt­ing to re­coup some of the tax­pay­er mon­ey that was ini­tial­ly used to sub­sidise those prop­er­ties up­on trans­fer, be­cause per­sons are prof­it­ing from trans­fers of these homes. You can speak to the chair­man for more in­for­ma­tion. How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment will sup­port any ini­tia­tives by HDC to re­coup funds and lessen the bur­den on the hard­work­ing law-abid­ing tax­pay­ers.”

Ear­li­er, Mitchell shared a doc­u­ment, signed by the act­ing HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, on his Face­book page, charg­ing that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress was now do­ing what it had ac­cused and de­rid­ed the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion of plan­ning to im­ple­ment.

“The HDC is now set up­on im­pos­ing what I see as an ‘In­her­i­tance Tax’ on per­sons who in­her­it HDC-bought prop­er­ties from their de­ceased loved ones. The Prime Min­is­ter, for years, while in op­po­si­tion, spun a lie that the PNM would soon im­pose an in­her­i­tance tax on cit­i­zens, when it is her Gov­ern­ment that is now do­ing the same,” Mitchell said.

The HDC doc­u­ment, dat­ed Jan­u­ary 29, 2026, framed the ad­just­ment as part of a man­date to “pro­mote fair­ness, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and the long-term avail­abil­i­ty of af­ford­able hous­ing.”

It said there was now a lim­it on the trans­fer of units less than ten years old. Units old­er than ten years, it said, will now be sub­ject to fee of ten per cent of the unit pur­chase price at the date of the sub­lease. In cas­es where the lessee dies, it said their will now be sub­ject to five per cent of the unit pur­chase price for the trans­fer of the prop­er­ty. It said this fee, al­so called a con­sent to as­sign, is re­ferred to as a nom­i­nal fee that will “ap­ply in cas­es of trans­fer to suc­ces­sors fol­low­ing the death of the own­er, to off­set le­gal work and re­lat­ed dis­burse­ments.”

But Mitchell in­sist­ed the ad­just­ments are “scan­dalous” be­cause the HDC pre­vi­ous­ly charged $700 for both process­es, which func­tioned as “an ad­min­is­tra­tive fee for ac­quir­ing con­sent to as­sign/sell/part with in­ter­est in the prop­er­ty.” He said the new fees “can­not be jus­ti­fied.”

“The HDC has in-house at­tor­neys em­ployed by it, al­ready paid by the tax­pay­er to do this type of work,” he said.

The new pol­i­cy means trans­fers will now cost thou­sands of dol­lars as op­posed to hun­dreds. Un­der the new pol­i­cy, a unit cost­ing $400,000, for ex­am­ple, will at­tract a fee of $20,000 when it is trans­ferred from the de­ceased client to their heir.

Mitchell al­so crit­i­cised the new rule that bars the lessee from trans­fer­ring a prop­er­ty un­der ten years. He said this is con­trary to lease­hold covenants and does not con­sid­er mul­ti­ple sce­nar­ios in which the lessee could le­git­i­mate­ly need to trans­fer their unit to an­oth­er, in­clud­ing a change in fi­nances.

He al­so ques­tioned if this was even pos­si­ble, ask­ing, “In what le­gal realm does the HDC think that it can uni­lat­er­al­ly amend the covenants of a Deed of Lease to the dis­ad­van­tage of home­own­ers?”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the HDC chair­man Feeroz Khan on the mat­ter. Khan an­swered his phone but de­clined to com­ment, in­clud­ing re­fus­ing to con­firm the ve­rac­i­ty of the doc­u­ment Mitchell shared on­line.

Lee un­aware of pol­i­cy

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee was not aware of the new HDC pol­i­cy.

In a What­sApp ex­change with Guardian Me­dia, he said he on­ly be­came aware of the pol­i­cy change when this me­dia house con­tact­ed him for a re­sponse. He said it was not dis­cussed with him or the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the Hous­ing Min­istry.

But hours lat­er, Lee, in an in­ter­view with a ra­dio sta­tion, said the fees amount­ed to a re­ver­sal of HDC pol­i­cy. Lee said he had or­dered an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how such a change was au­tho­rised.

Min­is­ters in the Hous­ing Min­istry, Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der and Anil Roberts, did not re­spond to re­quests for a com­ment.

Ahead of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions in 2023, the is­sue of in­her­i­tance tax was dis­cussed on the cam­paign. In a video shared to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Face­book page on June 13, 2023, in her ca­pac­i­ty as op­po­si­tion leader, she posed a ques­tion to then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about a pro­posed 25 per cent in­her­i­tance tax, fram­ing it as worse than the “dread­ed prop­er­ty tax.”

“I have been told, and I am ask­ing if this is true, that the Row­ley PNM plans on im­pos­ing a 25 per cent in­her­i­tance tax on cit­i­zens,” she said then.

“You know what that means? Your par­ents pass away, you pass away, you leave a lit­tle some­thing for your chil­dren or your grand­chil­dren, be­fore they could get it, they have to pay in­her­i­tance tax.”

Row­ley re­spond­ed to her ques­tion on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form days lat­er, deny­ing any knowl­edge of such a pol­i­cy com­ing from his gov­ern­ment. In­stead, he ques­tioned where Per­sad-Bisses­sar got that in­for­ma­tion from, call­ing it “a lie.”