Sareb transfers 50 homes to the Xunta de Galicia to be let as affordable housing

Sareb will temporarily transfer a minimum of 50 homes to the Xunta de Galicia to be let as affordable housing, in line with the agreement signed today by the Managing Director of Legal & Corporate Developmentof, Óscar García Maceiras and the Regional Minister of Environment, Land and Housing, Ethel María Vázquez. This agreement is the third of its type signed with Autonomous Communities, and comes on the back of those signed with Catalonia and Aragón.

The agreement establishes that the Galician Institute for Housing and Land (Instituto Gallego de Vivienda y Suelo – IGVS) will manage the transferred homes for four years, thereby helping to cover its need for more affordable rental housing. The rent will be below 30% of the overall household income.

Sareb will receive a monthly payment from the Regional Government, which will include the payment of the property costs of the transferred properties, such as damage and civil liability insurance, service charges, municipal taxes and construction works required in order to ensure the properties are habitable. The Xunta will be responsible for obtaining the energy efficiency certificates, if the properties do not already have one, the standard maintenance and repair costs of the homes and technical assistance to the tenant, among others.

The Galician Institute for Housing and Land will take on the role of selecting the occupiers, based on its framework housing policy and signing a lease agreement with them. It will also manage the orderly return of the properties when the term of the agreement expires.

Sareb’s Managing Director reiterated the importance of agreements such as the one signed with the Xunta: “Conscious of the problem housing implies for a large number of families, Sareb is encouraging these agreements with local authorities, who unlike us, are able to manage affordable housing. We believe that agreements such as the one signed with Galicia, help to improve the situation of some of our fellow citizens, whilst at the same time allowing us to comply with the mandate entrusted to us”.

Sareb has offered a total of 2,000 homes to Autonomous Communities, in order for them to use them as part of their own social programmes. At the moment, the company has mobilised more than 700 homes based on the agreements signed with Catalonia, Aragón and Galicia and is in contact with other regional governments in order to secure new agreements in the upcoming months.