The Ministry of Housing of the Generalitat Valenciana has a large part of the advanced work. Its owner, Héctor Illueca, launched a campaign more than a year ago to try to convince the central government that Sareb's real estate assets could be used for public housing, and even sought allies in other autonomous communities to join his proposal.
Meanwhile, he launched a property purchase operation in the possession of the entity created to absorb thousands of toxic assets that the brick bubble left in the hands of the banks. To do this, the Housing Department thoroughly studied the stock of available properties and came to the conclusion that, in the best of cases, having them could mean an increase of 63% in the Valencian public housing stock, so meager as it is throughout the country.
In the first phase, the Ministry commissioned an appraisal of 1,706 homes offered by Sareb throughout the Community. Of these, only 583 were finally considered to be in favorable conditions, that is, just over 34% of the flats that have been analyzed meet the necessary characteristics to become part of the public offer.
Precisely yesterday Héctor Illueca announced a first acquisition of 325 homes that will be incorporated into the Generalitat and will later go through a "set-up process" before being awarded to families. "There are many that are not in good condition but that can be rehabilitated, and that generates employment and contributes to improving energy efficiency," the minister clarified. “We will also have to study the land available to Sareb and see the paralyzed works. All this will require a lot of work, but I want to value the principle in accordance with Sareb, which is a pioneer”, he highlighted.
182 of these homes are in the province of Valencia, 91 in Alicante and 52 in Castellón. Housing sources explained to La Vanguardia that "we will have to wait" for the central government to specify the details of its proposal before raising the fact that the Valencian government has budgeted a million-dollar investment that, now that the State has assumed its thesis, logic indicates that it should be renegotiated.
The homes for this first purchase are located in municipalities in areas that are considered “stressed”, those in which the median cost of the mortgage or rent represents more than 30% of median household income; and in which the purchase or rental price has experienced in the previous five years a percentage of accumulated growth of more than 3% higher than the accumulated growth of the CPI.
For example, in the province of Alicante, for the first phase it was planned to inspect 91 homes in 18 stressed municipalities, including Alcoi, Alicante, Altea, Almoradí, El Campello, Pilar de la Horadada, Torrevieja or Santa Pola.
"The important thing is that the homes are in ideal or almost ideal conditions to move into," Housing sources explain, "since the offer assessment teams have already carried out the triage and have prioritized the acquisition of those homes in , typology and preferential geographical location to guarantee the right to housing of the most vulnerable people".
