This sareeThe company that bought the toxic real estate of financial institutions that were rescued between 2008 and 2012, It is currently finalizing its first strategic plan since it came under state control in March last year. In addition to the financial goals, the project includes: new impetus for strategy corporate housing, In line with the social sustainability principle introduced by a law approved by the government in January 2022, it has become one of the company’s goals. The presentation of the plan will take place in the coming weeks, first at the end of March, to coincide with the publication of the company’s annual results, as various sources confirm in this paper.
The firm’s new social housing strategy has three main areas.. On the one hand, work is underway to identify a significant number of houses and land that can be sold to autonomous communities for social purposes. The number of properties the company offers to allocate to autonomous regions and municipalities increased from the initial 4,000 in 2013 to 15,000, and this number could be expanded to 5,000 more in 2021. The problem is that the assignments are much lower than originally planned. , despite the fact that Sareb bears half the cost to make them habitable: barely 3,386 by June.
Therefore, transfer agreements have not worked well, as smaller local governments have difficulty managing assets and housing is not available in demanded locations. To try to solve this and at the same time contribute to its main goal of selling assets and reducing the cost to taxpayers, Sareb wants to increase sales to autonomous communities, which has barely been around 400 since its inception. The company is negotiating in parallel with several autonomies and hopes the operations will take place in the future.
For this reason, it works to determine which administrations will be interested in buying housing and whether the location of their immovables is suitable for their needs, to check the livability of the apartments and their renovation needs. Openly, A month ago, it announced a public tender with an estimated value of 175m euros to contract a company that deals with “comprehensive maintenance” of its assets. real estate can be extended up to two years, extended up to five.
land allocation
Another big project Allocation of land owned by private developers to build and manage housing social rent (in principle between 10,000 and 15,000) for a period “equal to or greater than 50 years”. To launch the necessary public tender competition, Sareb hired consultant Pwc for 386,937 euros, advising on the technical, legal and economic feasibility analysis of the project. The first phase, which is the analysis and evaluation of the soils and how to bid, will be completed in a few weeks, followed by the second phase of four months to run the competition.
This is a model similar to that implemented by administrations such as the Barcelona City Council, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area or the Community of Madrid. The risk of construction, financing and operation of the houses will be borne entirely by the project owner and the assets will return to their owners after the transfer of the land is completed. In principle, Sareb should not be, because the law states that it should disappear in November 2027. However, the Government and FROB have left the door open to extend this period from time to time, although sources from the same state do not. be on the table now.
The third pillar of Sareb’s plan is the social management of the dwellings he has not handed over. The company had 1,243 social rental homes at the end of June. (families occupying properties mostly owned by former contractors by contracts prior to the transfer of assets to Sareb). In addition, last year, nearly 9,800 families living in homes they already own, almost all their tenants (1,297 as of June already in progress).
On the one hand, it offers them an affordable rent set at 30% of their income. But also, signed contracts – for three years, renewable for another two years – with specialist companies Servihabitat, Sogemedi and Gesocin those responsible for managing the livability of properties and helping these families get out of the vulnerable situation.
public monitoring
The job of designing this support for Sareb’s social housing comes from afar, although these days they have accelerated. The Ministries of Economy (responsible for the company through the Regular Banks Restructuring Fund (FROB)) and Transport (responsible for government housing policy) have been preparing it for about a year. The root of it all lies in Eurostat’s decision in March 2021 to force Spain to involve the company in the public sector for accounting purposes, increasing the debt by more than 34,000 million and the deficit by close to 10,000 million.
The community statistics office acted this way because the multimillion-dollar losses (5,075 million) that Sareb had accumulated from its founding in 2012 to the end of 2020 caused its own resources (4,800 million equity and subordinated debt provided by the State and shareholders) to fluctuate. private, mostly banks). Faced with this situation, the Government approved a legislative amendment in March last year allowing the company to purchase 4.24% of its capital for a symbolic consideration, increasing its participation to 50.14%. This allowed the company to take control of the company, assuming the State would have to pay off Sareb’s outstanding debt if it was unable to do so.