On the eve of publication of the draft NAMA legislation, Mike Allen of Focus Ireland wrote a guest post for PE arguing that NAMA must generate a social dividend. Today, in a guest post on Irish Economy, Odran Reid and David O'Connor point to NAMA's potential as a catalyst for better planning. Meanwhile, over at Notes on the Front, Michael Taft puts the Nirvana of Nama into context.
2 comments:
There is no doubt that NAMA's property portfolio is going to have a lot of effects that go way beyond addressing the banking crisis. It is one thing to talk about assets and what they are worth on a balance sheet. It is quite another thing to deal with that volume of bricks and mortar. The amount of housing that NAMA will own cannot but have a massive effect on the housing market with every act that it takes.
For example, if NAMA sells a lot of housing in one area, won't this lower house prices in that area? But if NAMA holds on to a lot of property in that area, could that not create a shortage, artificially raising prices?
And how is NAMA actually going to manage 'holding' property to avoid dumping it on the market? Who is going to maintain it? Will NAMA-owned housing attract squatters? Will all these new estates and apartment blocks have metal sheeting put up in the windows?!
How is NAMA going to ensure that lending to businesses starts again? Answer, it cannot. If insufficient lending starts then NAMA is the most expensive failure in history.
Only the temporary nationalisation of the banking system can ensure that lending resumes.
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