Exploring the adoption of housing microfinance within the Georgian market

MicroBuild Fund, an initiative of Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter, aims to increase access to affordable housing finance products and services for low-income households globally by providing bundled capital and technical assistance to financial institutions.

Through this work, the fund seeks to demonstrate housing microfinance’s value to the broader industry, and to subsequently increase housing microfinance investment. Institutions that received capital and technical assistance from the MicroBuild Fund often subsequently scale their housing portfolios.

Intervention description

To explore whether the success of MicroBuild Fund investee institutions yielded a crowding-in effect, whereby non-MicroBuild Fund financial institutions adopted and scaled housing microfinance products.

Evidence methodology

To perform the study, the Terwilliger Center conducted desk research and developed a research methodology based on the Diffusion of Innovation Theory.

Terwilliger Center staff members then spent three weeks in-country interviewing a diverse set of financial service providers, including commercial banks and microfinance institutions. They also interviewed other key market actors, including government agencies, development organisations, investors and nongovernmental organisations.

• See also Scott Merrill and Sheldon Yoder's blog: Can we adapt market systems strategies for housing?