A top re­al es­tate ex­ec­u­tive has called for greater gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion con­cern­ing bu­reau­crat­ic ap­provals in a bid to re­duce the gap be­tween con­struc­tion costs and af­ford­abil­i­ty in the res­i­den­tial re­al es­tate mar­ket.

De­spite dis­tinct­ly high lev­els of de­mand, de­vel­op­ers are dis­cour­aged due to these de­lays caused by red tape and the in­crease in the cost of con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als. These have dri­ven con­struc­tion costs up, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly di­min­ish­ing sales as a re­sult of the widen­ing af­ford­abil­i­ty gap, said Jean Paul De Meil­li­ac, the CEO of Ter­ra Caribbean Trinidad.

He told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view on Thurs­day that T&T has seen a sig­nif­i­cant slow­down in new res­i­den­tial projects, as many de­vel­op­ers find it dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy new de­vel­op­ment at cur­rent sales val­ues.