Homework is coming: If you’re a Cairo American College parent, it’s your last weekend before the grind resumes — homework, tutors, weekend sports practice, college application essays, adjustment to middle school. This is your future. The kids are back to session on 16 August for new students, 17 August for returning students. Not a CAC parent? Your turn will come soon enough: MBIS is back on 21 August, BISC is back on 28 August, and both AIS and MES are back in session on 4 September.

** SAVING CAIRO FROM ITSELF

Mythbuster: Land registration has nothing to do with why Egypt doesn’t have a large-scale mortgage system

We said earlier in this series that offering a path to legal, affordable home ownership is among the keys to saving today’s Cairo and laying the groundwork for its future. But walk into any bank branch in Egypt and inquire about a 20- or 30-year mortgage and you’ll be met with some combination of raised eyebrows, confusion and general grumpiness.

Ask any expert in the field why you — or a member of your staff or the most humble of skilled tradesmen, for that matter — can’t find a mortgage product and you’ll be told it is not a regulatory issue. The problem is that too many homes are unregistered, too many buildings the subject of ownership disputes to make it safe for banks to write mortgages.

As a player in the real estate industry and with direct access to the nation’s banking professionals, what we’re about to say may surprise you: The problem is not the registration system. Need proof? Not terribly long ago, the Central Bank of Egypt released EGP 10 bn into the banking system to promote home ownership. The money was earmarked for mortgages on low-income housing. Qualified applicants were allowed household incomes of no more than EGP 8,000; the maximum mortgage was for EGP 300,000. How long do you think it took before the entire pool of funding was taken up and moved into the market? Two years? One year? Six months? Tap here to read the answer — and the rest of this week’s installment.

** This is part four of a five-part series by SODIC, a leading real estate developer and proud sponsor of Enterprise. Here, SODIC shares its view on how business and government can work together to save Cairo — doing good for more than 20 mn people and making a reasonable profit at the same time. Subsequent instalments will appear each Thursday morning, exclusively in Enterprise.

** Did you miss parts one and two in this series? Read them today.
Part 1: Why is your day in Cairo so hard — and what can we do about it?
Part 2: Egypt’s real housing sector: Market-based informality
Part 3: There’s a reason middle-income housing doesn’t exist — here’s how the government can fix it