Nama sitting on over 35,000 house sites, Minister says they are not 'commercially viable'

Up to 36,000 sites for new houses under the control of Nama have yet to be delivered, despite the four-year-old national housing crisis.

Minister Paschal Donoghue: “These sites are either not commercially viable at current sales prices."

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has revealed that the State’s bad bank has so far delivered 7,800 sites but that five times that amount has yet to be made available.

The Opposition has called for builders who are sitting on land to allow the prices increase to be hit with higher levies to force them to develop it. Mr Donohoe said that while 7,800 units have been completed to date, another 20,900 units are potentially deliverable from sites that are under construction or where planning has been granted, lodged or about to be lodged.

Sites with a delivery capacity of another 15,000 units are at the pre-planning or feasibility stages,” he said.

“These sites are either not commercially viable at current sales prices and/or have specific infrastructural requirements such as roads, water or sewerage that will need to be addressed by local authorities and other State bodies before a planning application can be lodged.”

He said Nama’s debtors have the right to maximise the sales value of properties securing their loans so as to enable them to maximise their debt repayments.

Nama cannot require a debtor to take action which would reduce his/her repayment capacity, such as the sale of property at less than its market value, he said.

Mr Donohoe said Nama’s loans are secured by an estimated 1,729 hectares of residential development land, which is under the control of its debtors and receivers. He said, based on this statutory requirement, it is estimated up to 780 units have been deliverable from Nama-funded developments under Part V since 2014.

Since 2014, Nama has identified 6,984 residential properties as being suitable for social housing and demand has been confirmed by local authorities for 2,717 of these units.

Nama holds security over an estimated 200 residential units which are currently and temporarily vacant,” said Mr Donohoe. “The majority of these units are at the sale agreed stage, or are on the market for sale, or are between tenancies and are all expected to be in use shortly.

To date, Nama has delivered 2,474 houses and apartments for use as social housing and invested over €350m in remediating, completing and purchasing properties for social housing use.

Mr Donohoe was responding to a parliamentary question from Solidarity/ People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett.

Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin, speaking to the Irish Examiner, said developers sitting on land must be penalised.

There are significant tranches of land which have planning permission and which are serviced ready to go,” said Mr Ó Broin.

“What Government needs to do is to act. Where developers are refusing to move on land, there needs to be a consequence. Whether that is a significant increase in the vacant site levy or the withdrawing planning permission, there needs to be a stick approach.”