The NAMA CEO, Brendan McDonagh delivered a speech to the Irish Council for Social Housing (ICSH) in Salthill this morning in which he gave further details of the NAMA negative equity mortgage product. It is, said Brendan, hoped that the new mortgage product will be trialled in Q4, 2011 (which starts in a couple of days) and Q1, 2012 and will cover 750 properties initially. There have been discussions with AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB but Brendan wasn’t giving any further details this morning. There is strong speculation that the negative equity product will resemble the product launched by financial services group, IFG three weeks ago.
There wasn’t a great deal new in the speech at all, but the following was interesting
(1) NAMA claims the Government have agreed with the Troika that NAMA will generate €7.5bn in cash by 2013. Again the view on here is that this is not a term of the Memorandum of Understanding and doesn’t carry a force of commitment, and can be changed.
(2) NAMA claims to control 10,000 of what it estimates are “50,000 residential units lying vacant dwellings all over the country”. It’s not clear where NAMA sources its vacancy figures but there are 23-33,000 vacant dwellings in so-called ghost estates (ghost estates generally make up less than 1/10th of our housing stock) and that there are 100,000+ vacant dwellings that represent an overhang. The 50,000 estimate from NAMA has the feel of an estimate of new housing on estates than total empty property.
(3) NAMA says that there 100,000 people on our housing lists. The estimate from the ICSH is that 98,000 households are on the housing list with about half being one-person households, but that would still seem to give you a total well in excess of 150,000 people. That said, there is a suspicion that we are not accurately counting the numbers on the housing list because of double counting and not counting households who secure housing.
(4) NAMA estimate that only 35% of approved mortgages are being drawn down.
And finally, as is customary in a speech from NAMA, there was the usual dig at developers, though somehow this seems softer than the “extravagant mindset” finger-wagging tirades in previous speeches.
“At NAMA we have a very simple maxim, if the taxpayer is being asked to keep a debtor in business it would seem to be a matter of basic common sense that the debtor would not seek to maintain a lifestyle that is beyond his current means. It draws unnecessary media attention and it takes away from the many genuine debtors who are doing their level best. I urge debtors to engage in NAMA, we are realistic, but you have to meet us halfway. We want to try and (sic) achieve a consensual workout; it is the optimal way to find a solution to a very difficult problem in the interest of all our citizens.”
The speech is available here and the press release summarising the key points NAMA wants to publicise, is here.
NAMA Wine Lake 
So they actually went and did it. Over state objections even. Nama is truly a sovereign entity at this point.
The amount of houses is actually absurdly small considering the size of Nama’s portfolio and the ghost estates around the country. I think it would be very interesting to see just who is getting these loans, and what houses they are buying.
Here we go again, a false bottom being proposed by none other than NAMA.Buy a house for €200,000- or else!!!.
This is taxpayers money they are proposing to lend and mind you it seems that it must be a minimum of €200,000 -thus setting the “bottom”.
However Minister Penrose has seen through it and is opposed to it.
Time to change the head honchos in Nama who don’t seem to respect taxpayers.
Same could be said for CEO’s of the banks who seem to think they are worth more than €500,000 per annum. Better to immediately pay peanuts and get monkeys as they would possibly not have done any worse than the people who gleaned millions from the banks in pay and perks.
A cap of €250,000 is more than sufficient for these people and all other employees in the state sector in receipt of taxpayers hard earned money.