November-05-2020 in Banking & Financial Services, Property, Construction
Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien TD, recently announced a €3.1 billion housing budget. Minister O’Brien noted that Budget 2021 will be the largest social housing build programme in the history of the State. A particular emphasis will be placed on Approved Housing Bodies (AHB’s).
The Minister announced the following AHB measures:
- €110 million will be provided to deliver new Affordability Measures, including a national Affordable Purchase Shared Equity Scheme for first time buyers and a new funding model to accelerate the delivery of approximately 400 Cost Rental homes through the AHB sector;
- New Cost Rental Equity Loan Facility (CRELF) will allow AHBs to borrow up to 30% of the cost of Cost Rental homes from the State meaning the delivery of homes at significantly below market rents;
- Funding of €220 million (+€77m on 2020) will continue to support the growing delivery of new social housing homes by the AHB sector, via the Capital Advance Leasing Facility (CALF). The increase in funding will allow for the provision of 3,800 additional social homes through new build and acquisition in 2021
Full details from the announcement can be accessed here.
This is positive news for our AHB and funder clients alike, evidencing continued government commitment to resolving the housing crisis through supporting the uptake of new schemes and providing assurance to developers, relevant bodies and funders that their commitment to the sector continues to have a good financial grounding. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of assistance on forward sale financing projects or related services.