THE THREE most indebted borrowers of the National Asset Management Agency have combined debts of €8.4 billion – an average of €2.8 billion each, the State agency has revealed but has not disclosed their identities.
Nama has also furnished the full list of properties it has seized from bankrupt developers for the first time. The list was published on the agency’s website yesterday.
The agency has posted a list of 847 properties taken over by receivers and administrators it has appointed as part of its efforts to find buyers.
The list shows how the property crash has left the State as the owner of hotels, trophy homes, golf courses, creches, a marina, shopping centres and pubs across Ireland and the UK.
The majority of the properties are in Ireland with 220 in Dublin, followed by 80 in Cork and 52 in Limerick. The properties are for the most part houses, apartments and development properties.
Among the assets are trophy homes on Elgin and Ailesbury roads in Dublin, the Weston airport in Co Kildare, the Longford Shopping Centre and marshland in Booterstown, Dublin.
The hotels include the Fota Island Hotel and the Castlemartyr Hotel in Co Cork, Portmarnock Hotel and Golf Links in Co Dublin and the Glenroyal and Moy Valley hotels in Co Kildare.
Nama revealed the heavy concentration of property debts among a small number of borrowers, showing the financial damage wrought by big developers during the boom.
Aside from the three heaviest borrowers, the next nine most indebted owe an average of €1.6 billion.
In total, the top 12 borrowers, who each have debts of more than €1 billion, owe €22.3 billion, according to Nama’s annual report for 2010 published yesterday.
The agency’s chief executive Brendan McDonagh said it was “astonishing” the top 180 borrowers accounted for €62 billion of the €72 billion loans at the agency.
Set up by the Government to purge five banks of their most toxic loans, Nama reported a loss of €1.1 billion for 2010, its first year in operation.
The agency was forced to write down the loans on its books by a further €1.4 billion after imposing a haircut of 58 per cent – or losses of €41.8 billion – on the banks when it acquired the loans.
Nama said it had taken the additional write-down due to further declines in the property market since the loans were valued in 2009.
The agency also revealed further plans yesterday to jump-start the property market in an attempt to encourage buyers for about 12,000 houses and apartments linked to loans on its books.
Nama is proposing to offer buyers a deferral on 20 per cent of the value of properties it sells if they fall further in value after five years.
More details will emerge after the summer following talks with the Government before the scheme is tested with a pilot run. The banks have yet to sign up to the proposals.
“Our overarching principle is to get the residential property market moving again,” said Mr McDonagh.
Nama chairman Frank Daly said homeowners with loans outside Nama might be concerned about the effect on the value of their property but the scheme would also benefit them. “This has the potential to lift all boats. We are not getting into the market in a huge way,” he said.
A fear of further house declines and negative equity – where the loan is worth more than the house – was deterring buyers, he said.
Mr McDonagh said the scheme would support the purchase of about €1 billion of properties in a bid to shift about 5,000 houses and apartments off its books.
This has the potential to put €200 million of State money at risk but the sales could generate €135 million in tax receipts. “What we are talking about is a very modest intervention,” said Mr Daly.
