2023-06-21 03:14:41
Mexico City. To reduce the gender gap in access to mortgage credit, the Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit) launched the new Infonavit Woman program, which will make it easier for this sector of the population to buy a home or land.
With this new scheme, women will be able to obtain a bonus of 20 points in their pre-qualification and in this way they will only need 1,060 points to access a mortgage, unlike the 1,800 that men require.
Also, they will have five years more than men to be able to request financing; thus, the age of the beneficiaries will be 75 years, which will allow them to increase their purchasing power at the age in which they exercise a credit and to liquidate it.
In a press conference, the director of the Institute, Carlos Martínez Velázquez, pointed out that to achieve this new product, a series of adjustments were made to the Business Rules of all Infonavit financing options. He pointed out that with the new scheme, 2.4 million women are already likely to qualify for a mortgage loan in Mexico.
He mentioned that the agency manages five million current loans, of which 37 percent correspond to women and 62.6 percent to men.
The wage gap of up to 20 percent and access to formal employment between men and women are factors that make it difficult for the female sector to access a home loan, he said.
Women, he said, take out a mortgage at an older age, 10 years later than men, due to the perception of lower wages, because they resort mostly to informal jobs and have temporary exits from the labor market, which makes it difficult for them to have a continuous contribution in social security.
Thus, while a man can buy a house at 24, or most men do between 24 and 30, women buy it between 30 and 35, the official explained.
At the time, Nadine Gasman, president of the National Institute for Women (Inmujeres), pointed out that the female sector dedicates 70 percent to unpaid work, and therefore they have less possibilities of accessing the same rights as men, “they receive salaries lower and have less financial inclusion”.
In real terms, she added, women work 40 hours a week in unpaid domestic activities, compared to 15 hours for men. “Then men have time to go out to work and have a career, and women have a harder time developing,” she said.
Martínez Velázquez also announced a new financing scheme called Mejoravit Repara, through which beneficiaries can access a microcredit of 37,000 pesos that can be repaid in up to five years.
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