The Council of Ministers has decided this Tuesday what the criteria that the properties of the Asset Management Company from Banking Restructuring (Sareb) must meet in order to be used for affordable rent will be. It has also decided that these assets be transferred to SEPES, the state-owned housing and land company of the State.
Sareb, also known as the bad bank, was born in 2012 with the aim of rescuing several banks affected by the financial and real estate crisis of 2008. In total, the Government of Spain has identified 40,000 homes, as well as 2,400 plots of land on which another 55,000 could be built. Now Sareb will transfer these properties to National Heritage and then they will be incorporated into the new public housing company.
According to data advanced by La Voz de Lanzarote, Sareb has about a hundred homes on the island. In total, five of its seven municipalities house homes of the bad bank. The one that has the most, Arrecife, 67 homes, 26 annexes and eight tertiary units; followed by Teguise, San Bartolomé, Yaiza and Tías.
The Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda, Isabel Rodríguez, has explained the details of this agreement focusing on its objective: "It is about sending what one day served to rescue the banks, today to rescue families", she stressed at the press conference after the Council of Ministers.
She also defended that it is "a component of political determination" and "of different ways of acting in the face of a crisis, which is to save the banks or to save the families. And our model is the public one; it is to save the families".
Rodríguez has assured that this repairs "the consequences derived from the previous financial crisis, which was the use of these homes from the evictions of families to pay for the financial rescue".
The Sareb homes that will become part of this initiative to promote affordable rent must follow geographical, economic and technical criteria.
Thus, priority will be given to the islands and metropolitan municipalities, those with a population of more than 5,000 inhabitants or 1,000 if they have had a population growth of more than 5% in the last ten years.
In addition, a minimum criterion of concentration of ten homes is incorporated in those municipalities that do not belong to metropolitan areas and islands, which contributes to efficiency in the management of these.
Regarding the economic criterion, homes with an area of up to 85 useful square meters are included regardless of the appraisal value and those with an area of up to 150 useful square meters whose appraisal value does not exceed by 40% the value that would result from multiplying the extension of the property by the average price per square meter for free housing that the Statistics of Appraised Value of Housing published by the MIVAU throws for the province in which said property is located or for the municipality, in the event that this Statistics exists and the value is greater than for the province.
Regarding the technical conditions, the buildings and homes will not present structural pathologies and will be in accordance with urban planning legislation and will have adequate habitability conditions. However, these criteria will not be taken into account in the case of homes with a social rental contract in force, where all homes will be assigned.
As for the available land, they are located in municipalities of more than 5,000 inhabitants and will have an area of more than 150 m2; they will be qualified for global multi-family or collective residential use; and they must be able to house developments of 30 or more homes. Also, the land must be registered in the Land Registry and in the General Directorate of Cadastre, in full ownership of SAREB