Colm Fitzpatrick
Irish banks selling to vulture funds will lead to a “greater risk” of people losing their homes, and “do little” to curb the fragility of the current housing crisis, a prominent charity has said.
Peter McVerry Trust, the national housing and homeless charity, said that the recent move by Ulster Bank to sell more than 5,000 mortgages to a vulture fund, alongside PTSB’s announcement of the sale of over 10,000 mortgages will “inevitably lead to more cases of homelessness and bring greater dysfunction to an already chaotic rental and housing system”.
The charity’s CEO Pat Doyle said: “Regardless of whether these are people’s principal dwellings or whether they are tenanted buy-to-lets, they are people’s homes and they are now at a greater risk of losing their home than they were before these sales.”
He added that the scale of these sales must be appreciated and understood, stressing that it is an “enormous issue” and one that cannot be underestimated.