THE National Housing Trust (NHT) anticipates that by today it would have processed payments to 40,000 contributors who have successfully applied for refunds.

Despite an ongoing glitch that forced it to take its mobile app offline and rely solely on its website for submissions, almost 67,000 applications had been received up to Wednesday.

In comparison, within the first three days of January 2024 the NHT had received 30,870 applications, with 18,415 coming in via its online portal. By the end of the year there were six times that amount of applications processed.

“In 2024, the NHT refunded 180,000 contributors totalling $9.7 billion. This represents contributors who had their refund applied as a credit to their mortgage account and those who received their refund as cash in hand,” the trust said in response to questions from the Jamaica Observer.

It did not provide an estimate of the total amount eligible for refund this year.

Contributions are held by the NHT for seven years then become eligible for refund the year after. Contributions made in 2017 and before are now eligible for refund. Applications can be made any time after the seventh year but many people apply in January to help cushion the gap left by an early December salary and spending over the holidays.

Applications can be done only online via the NHT website or its customer portal now that the mobile app has a glitch. The NHT was unable to give a timeline for when the app will be back up.

“Regrettably the NHT’s mobile app has not been performing at optimum, resulting in a service experience that’s below our usual standards. Our teams continue to work towards resolving this matter. In the interim, the NHT has taken the app offline and will take the opportunity to improve and upgrade the platform. Customers can expect a more improved service delivery via this channel once completed,” the entity said.

The NHT continues to remind applicants to be vigilant in order to avoid scams that often occur at this time of year.

It has urged people applying for refunds to use only approved channels such as the NHT website and portal, ignore unsolicited e-mail, verify domain names of e-mail received, avoid clicking suspicious links, and protect personal data.

In addition, the NHT is urging applicants to avoid common mistakes that may delay successful processing of applications. These include a failure to provide valid documentation, applying for the incorrect year, an incomplete or inaccurate application, using a name that does not match NHT records, or providing incorrect banking information.

Refunds usually take 10 to 15 working days to process.