Pity the tenants of commercial properties that are presently subject to loans at Irish Bank Resolution Corporation. If they are struggling to survive and particularly if they are laboring with pre-February 2010 leases which provide for Upward Only Rent Reviews, and if they find themselves with rents perhaps as much as double current market rents, then they are stuck, because IBRC doesn’t have a scheme to deal with rent reduction requests from tenants.
Unlike NAMA.
NAMA set up in December 2011 its rent abatement initiative despite previously claiming that abolishing UORR clauses in pre-February 2010 leases would cost it billions – or “billens” as the NAMA CEO Brendan McDonagh would say. In its end of year review for 2012, NAMA it had approved €13.5m of rent abatement applications so far. Of the 276 applications received, 212 have been approved, 8 refused and 56 are currently being approved.
It has been revealed today that NAMA is processing rent abatement applications within an average of five days, which is pretty impressive.
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan was providing a belated response to a parliamentary question from the Fianna Fail finance spokesperson Michael McGrath. At the moment, I just have a graphical PDF of the response which includes Minister Noonan saying “I am advised by NAMA that an application for rent abatement is the equivalent of any other credit application and that once all the requisite information in received by NAMA, applications are currently processed within, an average, five working days. NAMA works to a target turnaround time for credit decisions of seven days”
