To end Quarter 1 2018, the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) had identified 6,984 units, associated with the security for loans that NAMA has acquired, that could be made available for social housing. Many of these units were in unfinished housing developments or developments that required significant remediation work. All of the units identified by NAMA, regardless of their condition, location or circumstance were offered to local authorities in the first instance.
To date, demand has been confirmed by local authorities for 2,717 of the properties that NAMA has identified as potentially available. Local authorities have confirmed that 2,424 of the properties are considered unsuitable by reference to sustainable planning and housing policy, or are located in areas with no social housing demand. A further 1,843 properties have been sold or privately let by the owners or receivers since the initial offer was made to the local authority.
These and other statistics are available on the website of the Housing Agency at www.housingagency.ie/NAMA.
The figures are available on a cumulative basis and a breakdown per annum is not available. However, previous status reports, which are published on a quarterly basis, are available on the website of the Housing Agency at www.housingagency.ie/our-services/housing-supply-services/nama/previous-status-reports.aspx.
There is no specific funding stream in my Department for properties purchased or leased through the NAMA process but it is integrated as part of the normal funding programmes. Where the dwelling is purchased by an AHB or local authority, it is delivered as a subset of the capital programmes depending on the delivery model - i.e. local authority acquisition under the Social Housing Investment Programme (SHIP) or AHB acquisitions under the Capital Advance Leasing Facility (CALF). Where a property is leased, this is funded under the Social Housing Current Expenditure Programme (SHCEP).
Information in relation to the number of local authority and AHB purchases and the number of leases is available on the NAMA website (updated to end-December 2017), at the following link:
www.nama.ie/social-initiatives/social-housing/.
Where a dwelling is purchased or leased by an AHB, it is made available to local authorities for social housing use under long-term lease arrangements known as Payment and Availability Agreements (P&As). In addition, NAMA has established a special purpose vehicle (National Asset Residential Property Services Limited ‘NARPS’), to take ownership of properties where there is an established demand and then lease them long-term to an Approved Housing Body (AHB) or local authority. All NARPS leases are 20 years and 9 months in duration and rents are adjusted in years 7, 10, 13 and 16 in accordance with changes in the CPI Rental sub-indices.
The on-going costs of both P&A Agreements and NARPS agreements are funded by my Department under the SHCEP.
Information in relation to the annual costs of NARPS dwellings and P&A agreements in respect of NAMA dwellings is set out in the table below. This data is based on operational units at end Q1 2018.
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Local Authority/AHB NARPS Dwellings
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No. of units
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1174
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Annual cost
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€11,709,992
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Length of leases
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20 years 9 months
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AHB NAMA Purchased Dwellings - CALF
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No. of units
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292
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Annual cost
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€3,016,976
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Average length of P&A
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28 years
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In addition to NARPS type leases, a small number of direct leases were entered into between property owners and AHBs/local authorities via NAMA and are operational under the SHCEP programme. Details of the number of these leases, broken down by AHB and local authority, are available on the NAMA website.
