Sareb (Society for the Management of Assets from Bank Restructuring) has everything ready to take the first step to build the first homes that will be rented at affordable prices. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced on April 16 of last year the mobilization of up to 50,000 homes from the public entity for rentals below market prices. Ten months later, the promise is beginning to come true with the launch of the land tender to build the initial 3,500 floors, a process that will be approved in the coming days, as confirmed by company sources.
The initiative to build up to 50,000 social rental homes is known as the “Vienna project.” It is not social housing, which will follow another path, but rather rentals aimed at the middle and working classes who want to rent but who face a market with runaway prices. Nor are they the ICO guarantees for 2,500 million that will be approved tomorrow in the Council of Ministers.
The first step in the affordable rental housing plan is for the initiative to be ratified by Sareb's board of directors, which will be joined by the new president of the FROB, Álvaro López. He replaces Paula Conthe after the restructuring of the Ministry of Economy. The next meeting of the entity's governing body will be held on February 28.
In this first phase, the objective is to tender seven lots of land on which to build 3,500 homes. The land is part of Sareb's assets and is distributed across ten autonomous communities, 19 provinces and 33 municipalities throughout different parts of Spain. According to sources from the financial sector, this first lot will include land in Catalonia (there will be land in the province of Barcelona, but not in the city), in the Valencian Community, in Murcia, in Madrid, in Castilla y León and in Castilla-La Mancha, among other territories. All of these assets come from finalist land inherited from 24 savings banks that received public aid. These entities had a prominent presence in the Mediterranean arc.
The formula that will be used in this process, which has a notable political and business interest, will be the following: Sareb will transfer the land for 80 years and the builder or promoter who opts for the tender will be able, once the homes are built, collect rent from tenants during that time (then that land will become part of the public land entity, Sepes, or to the autonomous communities). The winners of the tenders will not be able to set the prices they wish, but rather reference tables will be stipulated in the tender itself.
Sareb has identified that in the areas where the land to be launched is located, there is demand for affordable rentals and, therefore, there is investment appetite. In this process, the entity chaired by Javier Torres has had the advice of PwC. Bank and consulting firm have been working on the Vienna project since 2022 to select the land that will be used to build the homes that will be rented at prices below current market prices. The demand for these affordable rentals has been calculated using an analysis of the demographics of the population where the land is located and the cost of rent at market prices.
In the real estate sector, the public-private collaboration plan has generated a significant investment appetite. According to Sareb and PwC estimates, this first package could mobilize 420 million euros. Construction companies and promoters are waiting to know the specifications to qualify for the tenders for the seven lots. Some companies are already working on projects with similar characteristics in Madrid, for example, where Vía Ágora and Aedas Homes have been awarded several lots in the Vive plan, which has already delivered several homes.
Sareb has also defined how it will be able to finance the construction of affordable rental housing. There will be two legs and the European Investment Bank (EIB), chaired by Nadia Calviño, will be involved in both. On the one hand, the resilience fund for the autonomous communities of the addendum to the Recovery Plan, endowed with 20,000 million, has a line for affordable rental housing. Builders will be able to resort to these soft loans, under conditions lower than market prices. On the other hand, the EIB has a window to finance community projects that it considers of interest using its own resources. In order to access this line of loans, investors need a private bank to be involved in the real estate operation by contributing a percentage of it.
The imminent Vienna plan competition will not be the only one. It is only the beginning of the project to promote affordable rentals, since Sareb has land in its portfolio to expand it throughout the legislature.
