At noon this Tuesday, in an activity led by the Minister of Housing and Territorial Planning (MVOT), Irene Moreira and the undersecretary of the Tabaré Hackenbruch portfolio, that portfolio subscribed to the trust that enables it to invest in housing construction.
The trust signed with República Negocios Fiduciarios SA enables the ministry to transfer funds to integrate the trust that will finance the housing projects of the Sueños en Obra Program.
According to the resolution of November 7, during 2022, as a result of this program, $450 million (about US$ 11.4 million) will be transferred by the MVOT Investment Trust to República Negocios Fiduciarios.
The legal advisor for the structuring of this Investment Trust for the Entre Todos, Sueños en Obra program was Dr. Jean Jacques Bragard.
After the trust was signed, Housing Minister Irene Moreira spoke with El Observador and stated that this program “is a before and after” in housing policy.
Moreira explained that Sueños en Obra is designed for the middle-class public that today pays rent, but cannot achieve the previous savings required for the purchase. “I want to promote this modality of rent with the option to buy, that you start paying five years and then continue paying for 15 or 20 years but that fee is your own ceiling,” described the minister.
This new access door to the house had been worked on since Moreira’s management began at the head of the MVOT. “It is a job between public and private”, stressed the minister. In fact, the construction companies will present the projects to the Ministry, from where they will be studied to verify that they meet the requirements and then approve them.
This trust applies to projects of different sizes and includes, above all, the smallest ones. “When it comes to two to eight houses, the Ministry would be able to contribute 80% of the value of the project,” Moreira said. This makes it possible to promote small and medium-sized construction companies that are found throughout the country. “Large companies are not interested in going to Quebracho or Tranqueras,” Moreira pointed out, stressing that one of their focuses is to boost the spillover in the economy generated by construction through SMEs in the sector.
Starting with nine properties, the ministry proposes a specific guarantee system for Entre Todos: Sueños en obra. For this, the portfolio maintains permanent conversations with the public housing system —with the Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay— and with the banks so that there is a specific interest in this guarantee system.
“We have seen interest from private banks wanting to participate and intervene in this Sueños en Obra,” Moreira said.
The spirit of promoted housing
“It was a very good law, but it lost its purpose,” Irene Moreira asserted when referring to the Promoted Housing Law created in 2011 and stressed that its spirit is taken up by this new initiative. “79% of the Promoted Housing projects were in Montevideo, 7% in Canelones, 7% in Maldonado and the remaining 7% in the rest of the country” and highlighted that there are nine departments that do not have promoted housing.
“We are looking for all the good things of that law, all those tax benefits, but spreading it to the interior, in particular, to the deep interior,” Moreira highlighted.
In fact, today, 74.4% of the projects presented within the framework of this plan are in the interior of the country. “That makes us happy because this creature that is being born is fulfilling the purpose that we wanted,” said the minister.