The Government's measure to buy apartments from funds

BarcelonaInvestment funds want to sell the apartments they own in Catalonia. That is the belief of the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque. And she already has a formula for purchasing these apartments: joint ownership, an idea launched by the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, in the general policy debate in Parliament this week, and which the Territory team has been working on for some time.

In fact, the measure is not only to buy apartments from funds, but the goal is to help older people be able to own an apartment. But Paneque believes there are many apartments owned by funds where families live as tenants that this figure would allow them to buy. And these homes, in many cases, could eventually end up in the hands of the Catalan administration over time.

The figure is possible only in Catalonia thanks to the Catalan Civil Code. The idea of the Generalitat, which plans to release the first tender in January of next year with a budget of 100 million euros, is that people aged 40 to 55 can buy half of an apartment and the Generalitat buys the other half. This operation would allow the buyer to stay in the apartment for 50 years. After this period, the apartment would pass to the Generalitat and become part of the permanent public housing stock. The operation could also be carried out by those over 56, but in that case, the Generalitat would hold 60% of the apartment and the co-owner 40%. And the co-ownership would be shortened in this case to 40 years.

Thus, Minister Paneque indicates, people who could not access an apartment because they would not be granted such a high mortgage due to their age, or the credit term would be so short that they could not afford the installments, could have an apartment under co-ownership by requesting half of the mortgage and, therefore, with an installment comparable to rent.

The measure would also allow these co-owners to sell their part of the apartment for the remaining period they have left to stay there. And in the event of death before the period ends, their heirs could inherit their part and stay until the end of the period, or buy the Generalitat's part to have 100% of the property. Mind you, it would be protected housing forever.

The Minister of Territory asserts that Catalonia lacked a public rental housing stock, and for this reason, the 50,000 plan has been launched, and in the longer term, the 214,000 plan, to have this protected rental stock. According to Paneque, over the last few years, the Generalitat has acquired some 5,000 homes, largely from investment funds, "and in these apartments, there are largely families living who could be owners".

"This mechanism allows those families who are able to acquire [the apartment] in a shared way with the Generalitat", asserts the minister, who adds that "in some way, we are activating these working middle classes so that they can be owners and have the stability and peace of mind of this apartment, and they help us in some way with this work that we are doing from the Generalitat of right of first refusal and retraction".

Purchasing army

For the minister, in addition to the apartments purchased by the Generalitat, the provincial councils, the city councils, and the third sector, it would be like "having an army of people, of middle-class citizens, who would help us to have this housing stock that large funds are getting rid of".

According to the minister, for two years the funds have wanted to divest because "they are funds that had seen housing as a financial fund" and that "they see that at this moment with the housing policies that exist in Catalonia, capping rent, they do not have the profitability they expected, and they are getting rid of these apartments and are going to look for other assets to invest in".