The sareb plans to allocate between 20,000 and 25,000 households additional to social rent, mainly offering them to autonomous communities and town halls so that they can buy them and use them for that purpose. This was confirmed to El Periódico, from the Prensa Ibérica group, by various sources aware of the plans finalized by the company, which became state-controlled in April last year. The company that received the toxic real estate assets of the financial entities rescued between 2008 and 2012 will thus increase the number of homes that it will contribute to the State Affordable Rental Plan promoted by the Government to around 50,000, significantly above the 25,000 to 30,000 initially announced by the Ministry of Transport.
The Ministries of Economy (as responsible for the company through the Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring) and Transport (in charge of state housing policy), plus those of Inclusion and Demographic Challenge, have been preparing the company’s new social housing strategy, together with the management team that began to manage it after the takeover by the State. In the absence of fine-tuning the latest numbers, the idea is to present said initiative included in its first strategic plan since it is public in the coming weeks, perhaps coinciding with the publication of the company’s annual results at the end of the month.
The President of the Government gave clues to these works a few days ago in the Senate, without fully breaking down the figures. “The entity is going to contribute 50,000 homes to the Affordable Rental State Plan, whose objective is increase the public rental housing stock by at least 100,000 units“, announced Pedro Sánchez. Until now, it was known that Sareb’s contribution to this plan would consist of just over 10,000 homes that it owns that are already inhabited and another between 10,000 and 15,000 that it expects to be built thanks to the temporary transfer of land to private developers.
three areas
Sareb’s new social housing strategy thus has three big areas. On the one hand, there are between 20,000 and 25,000 homes that could potentially be sold to territorial administrations for social purposes. They may also be land to develop public facilities. The Tortosa town hall, for example, acquired one in December for 615,000 euros to build a hospital.
The number of properties that the company offers to assign to autonomous regions and town halls, which are responsible for housing, has risen from the initial 4,000 in 2013 to 15,000, expandable by another 5,000 in 2021. The problem is that the assignments have been very lower than those originally anticipated, despite the fact that Sareb assumes half of the cost to make them habitable: only 3,386 until June. The assignment agreements, thus, have not worked well due to the difficulties of the smaller local administrations to manage the assets and due to the lack of housing in localities where they were requested.
To try to solve it, and also contribute to its main objective of sell the assets and reduce the cost to the taxpayer, Sareb wants to boost sales to territorial administrations. A few days ago it agreed to transfer 500 to the Valencian Community for 50 million euros, and is in negotiations with other autonomies. This is a substantial leap compared to the around 400 that it had sold to the public sector from its inception in 2012 to date.
Public-private collaboration
The other big project is the transfer of land of their property for private developers to build and manage between 10,000 and 15,000 social rental homes for a term “equal to or greater than 50 years”. Sareb recently signed the consultancy Pwc for 386,937 euros to advise it on the analysis of the technical, legal and economic feasibility of the project. In principle, said firm will make a proposal in May and, if approved by the board of directors, Sareb will launch the first public tender competition during the summerwhich will be followed by others, since the plan is expected to be developed in various phases.
This is a model similar to the one implemented by administrations such as the City Council and the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona or the Community of Madrid. He The risk of construction, financing and operation of the homes will be fully assumed by the developer and, once the transfer of the land has been completed, the assets will revert to their owner. In principle, it should not be Sareb, since the law establishes that it must disappear in November 2027. The Government and the FROB, however, have on occasion left the door open to extend that period, although sources from the Executive ensure that they do not now have it on the table.
social accompaniment
The third pillar of Sareb’s plan is the social management of inhabited homes that it has not transferred. The company had 1,243 social rental homes at the end of June (families occupying property owned by them, mostly from former developers, with contracts prior to the transfer of the assets to Sareb). In addition, last year it created a special directorate that is deploying a new system of social and labor accompaniment which it plans to extend to the more than 10,000 families that live in homes they own (as of June, 1,297 were already in process).
On the one hand, it offers them a affordable rent adjusted to 30% of your income. But in addition, it has signed -for three years, renewable for another two- the specialized companies Servihabitat, Sogemedi and Gesocin that are in charge of managing the habitability of the properties and helping these families to get out of a situation of vulnerability.
At a smaller and initial level, Sareb is also working with the Ministry of Demographic Challenge to promote housing in unpopulated areas, as well as with the Ministry of Inclusion to find housing solutions for seasonal workers.